It sounds like you’re from MN which may make a difference positive or negative. How important is transportation home? We’re a NJ based family and my son is at St. Olaf. Getting him home for breaks has been very easy, lots of shuttles to MSP at break time for Oles and Carls and direct flights to Newark. He’s dorm to door in 6 hours. Getting to MSP from Carlisle would likely be much longer. Carlisle is hours from any truly vibrant city, but the town itself is quite quaint with colonial historic feel. The college is right in town unlike Olaf up on the hill above (the also quaint) Northfield. It seems like roughly half of Olaf students are from MN, WI and IA with the rest from all over the country and the world. I imagine stats are similar for Dickinson for PA, NJ, MD. Totally subjective, but when we toured Dickinson, we felt like we were in a 3d marketing campaign everywhere we turned, it felt a little too self congratulatory. When we visited St. Olaf on the other hand, we were blown away by the feeling that this institution did everything it could to walk the walk of a supportive, inclusive, academic community of doers and thinkers. We have not been disillusioned yet. Olaf has Interim in January which allows lots of students to study off campus and internationally for shorter times with out interfering with course of study, but it also has a lot of requirements which is not for every student. Have you looked through the respective course catalogs? Does your daughter know what she wants to study?
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