A: I didn't apply to any financial safety schools--the five I did apply and get accepted to were all about equally costly. I think I already knew Carleton was the place for me, so I guess it was lucky that they offered me the best aid package of the five. Rather than being a deciding factor, I think it sealed the deal. Tuition is still a burden - on my parents now and on me in a few months when I graduate and the loan companies come knocking - but we got together and decided that the Carleton experience would be worth it. And it has been.

A: Kids and faculty are willing – eager - to come from all across the world to a sleepy town in the middle of the Midwest to spend four of the most vibrant years of their lives. I remain surprised at the strong pull Carleton exerts on kids from Paris, New York, the West Coast, Hong Kong, and on and on. That is really, really cool, and it speaks to the strength of Carleton’s faculty, facilities, reputation, and personality.

A: I came up to stay with my sister, a senior at the time, over Halloween and we got dressed up and went with her friends to the concert in the Chapel. It was the perfect display of Carleton's personality: a thousand college-aged kids in the most inventive and elaborate costumes crammed into a spooky Chapel listening to the orchestra creak out Halloween tunes. The place went wild when President Oden took the stage dressed as Indiana Jones, and victory in the rowdy costume contest went to the volleyball team, who came dressed as our Solar System, with some football player in the center as the Sun. I was struck hard by how un-self-conscious everyone was in their unflattering but impressively-clever costumes. To me, that implied the kind of openness and comfort-level that I never felt among my high school classmates, and that was enormously appealing.

A: Colby, Bowdoin, and Macalester.

A: Ultimate Frisbee, crosswords, hiking, writing.

A: Long story. It started with my sister Annie. She's four years my senior and graduated from Carleton in 2005, three months before I would begin my freshman year. Annie is an uncommonly good writer and a talented musician, and I'd spent 12 years following behind her in school, being "Annie's little sister," compared to her by peers and teachers alike. She's a tough act to follow. So my first priority was “Anywhere but Carleton,” because I finally had the chance to get out from under my sister's legacy. I wanted to get out of the Midwest, be alone and far from home and force myself to deal with that separation. It seemed like a very romantic and appealing challenge, so I started to look at schools out East. But though I didn't admit it to myself at the time, looking back I can see that I was using Carleton as the meter stick against which I compared all my other options. The East Coast schools are old, prestigious, beautiful, well-renowned, and exciting. Thing is, Carleton is all of those and more: friendly, open, and laid-back. The East Coast schools lacked the sense of humor that Carleton has in spades, and spending a few weekends on campus during high school with my sister gave me a taste of the personality that practically oozes from the walls here. In the end, I realized I’d looked all over the country for a school I’d like better than Carleton, and I never found one. At Carleton I’ve been able to pursue a completely different set of deeply-fulfilling interests than Annie did – the folks that know both of us here can never believe we’re related. It’s been a great fit for both of us, but it has fit us totally differently.

A: Three years at Carleton has made me more confident intellectually, socially, academically, and athletically. In high school I felt out-of-step with my teachers and the general mood of the student body, and it was hard to relax and let myself grow while I was at school. As a result I tended to shut down and be a little cynical to my classmates. I like to think my time at Carleton has helped me open up.

A: Try not to visit campuses during their summer or winter breaks. Carleton may be beautiful in July, but it's sort of an empty shell without the students here.

A:

The ten-week [trimester] schedule is great for a lot of reasons. Taking only three classes at a time allows each class a lot more focus and intensity than my friends at schools who have four or five classes for fifteen weeks. Not only do we spend less time in class each week, but we get to reassess our academic interests and paths at three different points in the year, which is a privilege.

Overall, academic life here is measured. First week is relaxed and low-pressure, 5th week is a burst of library time for midterms, 7th week comes as a welcome break, and by 9th week, you probably aren't doing anything that doesn't involve work for classes. Of course, like anything else, your academic life is what you make of it. It's up to you to do the readings and engage yourself in class.

The difference at Carleton is, unlike my high school, everyone's doing it. For me, this makes all the difference: to know that I'm part of a community of people who are taking this seriously makes it so much easier for me to get motivated to do my own work. People make sacrifices in other (more fun) areas to finish their reading so they can engage in class discussion the next day. People are passionate and think critically and bounce ideas off each other in the classroom. And everyone is smart. It has less to do with competitiveness and more to do with curiosity and interest, which is a distinguishing feature of Carleton among the top schools in the country.

A: Intro to Religion: studying religion well asks you to open up your mind to levels of subtlety that I'd never really explored in my high school classes. It felt like I was learning a whole new way of thinking, and it was compelling and fun, and it wound up as my major. Ecosystems Ecology: taught by the biggest rock star of a professor Carleton has ever seen. In class, he was organized, thoughtful, and explained complex science in terms that even the religion majors understood. The labs took advantage of our own local ecosystem (the Arb), which brought the concepts home.

A: An independent lab project for Ecosystems Ecology that examined rates of decomposition. Our small group had to go out and find a topic, design the experiment, run it, and cull the results, which took FOREVER, and was HARD.

A: ...you can smell Malt O Meal on days when the wind is out of the west and turkey poop on days when wind is out of the east.

A: Fall: the Hill of Three Oaks. Summer: Middle of the Cannon River. Spring: Mai Fete island, anywhere in the Arb, and West Gym Fields at Frisbee practice. Winter: the Libe

A: Campus life here is hectic and satisfying. Everyone is always busy all of the time. A challenge of living, studying, and working in one isolated microcosm is learning how to balance the desire to spend all night hanging out with your friends with the desire to be an active member of the community with the desire to bury yourself in the Libe until all your reading is done. There are days and weeks when the balancing act works better than others, and everyone gets overwhelmed at times, but it always seems to swing back in the other direction.

A: In no particular order of preference: Freshman Frisbee toss, Rotblatt, Spring Concert, Halloween concert, blowing bubbles on faculty during opening convo, Late Night Breakfast and the attendant Primal Scream, chasing Schiller into a crowd of brawling Carls, Reunion, Mai Fete, and, as much as the administration may try to gloss over this, there is still a proud core of streakers on campus that I have joined once or twice.

A: I consider myself lucky enough to have had the two coolest campus jobs there are: Arb Crew and post office. The former Arb Czar, Myles Bakke, was hands-down the best storyteller I've ever met. Our work shifts were combinations of seed-collecting, buckthorn eradication, prairie burning, trail maintenance, and watching Myles scale trees with a chainsaw in tow to thin out an area we restored to Oak Savannah. This job pointed me to my current potential post-college path, wilderness maintenance and trail restoration in National Parks.

A: I went to Mali with [professor] Cherif Keita in the winter of my junior year. Could rave about the program for hours. Most memorable experience touristically: riding a camel into the Sahara Desert at sunset. Experience of most personal growth: navigating my relationship with my host family, which is probably one of the hardest things I've ever done.