<p>fireflyscout-does you D feel like she’s isolated in a small town during the winter? I know that the twin cities is just a little over an hour away, which is about the distance from my town to Tulsa, OK. But due to the harsh weather in MN, I’ve heard that it feels like forever to get there and students are too lazy to drive through the snow. I understand that the situation in MN might be different from OK. Is this really true? This is actually the reason i chose to apply macalester over carleton, because from my impression, stuck in a small town during mid-winter is like being exiled to Siberia. I humbly ask for your insights. Please share your experiences, fireflyscout.</p>
<p>I had a friend from Minnesota who said that is common practice there to hook up electric heaters to automobile engines at night to keep them from freezing. I enjoy cold weather, but that’s a bit much for me.</p>
<p>Well, I am going to Carleton next year, and I can’t say how excited I am. I attended their Summer Writing Program this summer, and I fell in love with the school. That being said, you really won’t go wrong with either schools. Both are among the top 10 best liberal arts colleges in the country(Carleton 6, Bowdoin 7…
haha), both have small campuses in small towns, both are in cold climates etc.</p>
<p>In terms of prestige, they are both highly regarded by people/grad schools in the know. If you ask a random person on the street, they may have no idea, but if you ask an adcom at a grad school, they will immediately recognize both of those schools as two of the best in the country.</p>
<p>As I said earlier, you really can’t go wrong either way</p>
<p>Betterday, my daughter is a freshman so at this point she is loving all things winter. She has gone up to the Twin Cities at least twice since she’s been there. Northfield is a charming town, but she has been spending most of her time on campus. There is quite a bit happening on campus and she usually has to pick and choose what to do, so there’s not really much sense of isolation. I’ll check back with her in March, though!</p>
<p>I would personally prefer Bowdoin, but would not base anything from any slight differences (which will change next year anyway) from the USNWR rankings. Carleton is known as the school of the ugly people the same way Middlebury is known as the home of the beautiful people.</p>
<p>My D is a junior at Carleton and in 2.5 years has found very little time or need to get out of Northfield. She comes from a suburb of a large west coast city, so I worried about her getting bored with her “little town”. On the contrary, she is so busy with campus activities, social opportunities, work-study job, and academic workload that she’s only run up to the TC a couple of times a year (and one of those is when I’m there visiting). She does not have a car at school and has used both Carleton and private transportation to travel about 40 minutes to the airport and Mall of America. Snow does not impact the travel as the main north-south MN freeway is just a few miles from town. Northfield has so many non-chain quaint shops (coffee shops, excellent sandwich shops, clothing and accessory shops, etc.), that she hasn’t had any trouble filling those few hours a month when she gets a shopping urge. And the internet widens her shopping opportunities. She doesn’t feel she’s missing the big city life she came from. She is interested in attending grad school in a large metropolitan area, though. For both D and I, a huge attraction to Carleton’s location is the quick trip to a major airport hub with a direct flight home. That would be my one concern with Bowdoin’s location if a student is coming from areas other than the NE.</p>
<p>CArleton - beautiful campus!</p>