<p>I just visited a website called collegeprowller and it grades the quality of academics at carleton college to be B+. Is the academic quality of carleton inferior to its peer schools like bates college or oberlin college?</p>
<p>LOL the quality of academics of Carleton is the last thing u will have to worry about. Definitely Carleton has top-notch academic departments, and i would say that the intellectual feel in Carleton is better than the schools u’ve mentioned. and this should be the consensus from this forum.</p>
<p>Pay zero attention to College **<strong><em>! Our experience with several of the books is that they invariably make schools look ridiculous and the students shallow. (And what’s this about grading the “good looks” of male and female students? Uh, ok.) … I put College </em></strong> right up there with RateYourProfessor.com. Fun to read, but utterly meaningless and easily skewed. … All three colleges you mentioned have wonderful reputations. Academically, you can’t go wrong at any of them.</p>
<p>Inferior to what? </p>
<p>I don’t think that Carleton would continue to attract such outstanding students if the academics were inferior. I don’t feel my son is an inferior student, and Carleton has not been a “cake walk” nor has it been disappointing in class offerings.</p>
<p>I take any website or book that lets anyone pontificate without providing some sort of credentials (current/former student, transfer student, rejected student, professor current or past, etc…) with their reviews with a grain of salt. Students that have transferred away, or were rejected outright have a differing viewpoint, and their connection to the school should be noted.</p>
<p>You know what they say…if you have a good experience you tell three people, if you have a bad experience you tell ten. My guess is that students who have bad experiences tend to post more often and skew the results.</p>
<p>Additionally, using the site you mentioned for college data is like using Wikipedia to write a research report.</p>
<p>The fact that Carleton annually draws more National Merit Finalists than any other Liberal Arts College in the country does not bespeak of B+ academics. My NMF daughter will be attending this #6-ranked USNWR LAC in the fall, precisely because it is NOTED for its strong academics–along with many other great qualities.</p>
<p>I agree with previous posters that Carleton is top-notch academically. LACs in general have poor name recognition, midwestern ones even more so, but Carleton is still able to attract numerous top students precisely because of its reputation as an academic powerhouse.</p>
<p>As has also been said, the CP rankings are largely worthless. They are an interesting read, and could perhaps be used to generalize certain things. But all rankings are flawed, and these are particularly so.</p>
<p>While I do feel that Carleton stands out as the most “intellectual” of the B+ schools, other places that many consider to have top-notch academics fall into that category, including, but not limited to: Colby, Cornell, Grinnell, Macalester, NYU, Michigan, UNC, Notre Dame, and Wesleyan…along with numerous others that are equally as good, I just took a sampling. Looking at the Bs, one sees Reed and UCLA…two very different schools, but ones that I find almost certainly have better than “B” academics. Among the As, only MIT, Princeton, and Stanford get an A+. Would anyone say that the education at any of the A schools–Caltech, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Swarthmore, Chicago, Williams, and Yale, among others–is noticeably inferior?</p>
<p>Good points, pinnipotto. I went to the CP site and looked at the rankings after reading your post. Hmmmm. I’ll have daughters at both Carleton and College of Wooster this fall. Carleton is rated on CP with a B+ for academics, Wooster gets an A-. While we absolutely love Wooster, no way are its academics stronger than Carleton’s.</p>
<p>In addition to all the good points mentioned here, of all U.S. schools, Carleton was #6 in overall per capita future PhD production, ahead of Bates and Oberlin.</p>
<p>Source: Weighted Baccalaureate Origins Study, Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium, 1992 to 2001, so newer data may differ.</p>
<p>pinnipotto wrote the same things I was going to write. Well put.</p>
<p>I can think of no more effective way to refute the insanity of rankings and numerical ratings than to let them do battle with one another. Contrary to the student based survey results you read on that website, Princeton Review places Carleton in its Top 20 list for Professors Get High Marks and assigns it a 98 Academic Rating out of a possible 100, a grade equal to or higher than HYPS. In its onetime rating of faculty at all LACs, US News in 95 rated Carleton #1 for its strong commitment to undergraduate teaching. According to Yales Insiders Guide Carleton students seem to share a love of their professors and the Fiske Guide lauds the schools top-notch academic programs.</p>
<p>Take everything you read in your college search (even the above paragraph) with a grain of salt and certainly dont let individual numerical assessments good or bad dictate decisions. There is a lot of information out there often presented in neat/precise packaging to obfuscate the murky data that underlies it. Much of the information is outdated and steeped in stereotypes no longer applicable. Do use the information as a framework to begin a search. Then go look for yourself.</p>
<p>Also, these rankings are based on what students think they’re getting, as the CP system is based on “students tell all” and you’re assuming that students are telling the truth… yeah right…</p>
<p>Students at Harvard and Stanford et. al. don’t want to think they’re getting anything less than the best education the United States. Carletonians and Reedies may be overall more critical of the education they’re receiving. If they’re smart, that is, they’ll realize that not every professor is fantastic and that there’s always room for improvement. This is what I figured when Chicago (my school) was ranked #1 for Overall Academic Experience by PR and Yale didn’t even place in the top 20.</p>
<p>
At LACs where teaching ability is prized above all else, professors are hired precisely because they are fantastic. Everyone in every job can improve.</p>
<p>but from the thread in college search students at carleton don’t seem to receive as many fullbright scholarships as compared to its peer schools like middleburry… Is there a reason for this?</p>
<p>I’ve noticed that, too. I know many colleges actively court the prestige post-graduate scholarships, with special advising, etc. I don’t know if there is anyone/any department at Carleton providing that function.</p>
<p>I know that Carleton students do in house ratings of the freshman seminars. The professors and seminars that receive low ratings from the students are not repeated.</p>
<p>As for the Fullbright scholarships, how many are given all total among all the colleges? How many students are seriously in contention for them at any point in their college careers? Is that really the best criteria for selecting a college? My son did not go into the college selection process counting on a big recognized award or scholarship. </p>
<p>To me, that’s like saying I’m only going to consider a school if I can win a Nobel Prize or “insert award of choice.” Is it enough to be at a school with x number of award winners, but you aren’t one of them? I guess we should have rejected Carleton because they don’t have any football players that turn professional, no matter that my son does not play or have an interest in football.</p>
<p>I saw the Fulbright list this year and was also surprised not to see greater enrollment. I suspect this skew was interest-driven and related to the popularity of competing programs. </p>
<p>This year an unusually large number of Carleton grads (29) chose coveted Peace Corps positions, more than any other LAC and, for that matter, any other college in the country based on enrollment. The school continues to churn out leading numbers of National Science Foundation fellows.</p>
<p>Dont know if this represents a trend in reassigned priorities/preferences on the part of grads. Dont know how much the schools mentors, typically very involved to guide these complex applications, have fostered this.</p>
<p>Reed gets a B on academics? College ******* has officially lost its final ounce of credibility.</p>