When making admission decisions, our counselors look at a combination of academic and personal components, to get a whole picture of the student. The transcript is the most important part of the application. We want to see that you are challenging yourself by taking a difficult course load and still maintaining excellent grades.

On the personal side of things, a great amount of weight is placed on how involved you are outside of the classroom, as well as your recommendation letters and essay. While we require either the ACT or SAT, it is the last thing we look at. Impressive test scores are can be an asset to an application, yet we are more concerned with a student's performance within the classroom.

You'll take numerous classes at Carleton, but you'll never take a standardized test here.