Many student-athletes are attracted to Carleton due to numerous study abroad opportunities that are offered throughout the college's three-term trimester schedule. The trimester system has many advantages, including the opportunity for student-athletes to travel abroad without having to sacrifice in-season competition as a member of a varsity sport.

Carleton believes that off-campus study contributes to students’ understanding of the world’s variety and inspires long-lasting curiosity. Off-Campus Studies enriches Carleton’s extensive international engagements and its mission to educate citizens capable of engaging with complex global issues. By teaching students how to apply disciplinary and interdisciplinary tools in unfamiliar environments, off-campus study helps students make connections between their education and the world at large.

Students who study off-campus, experience the personal growth that results from leaving the confines of Carleton and its routines, and enter into a learning environment that is different in customs and norms. This new environment may offer chances to communicate in new languages, meet people from different backgrounds, experience new living space, navigate in an unfamiliar place, ask for help, travel independently, and consider different points of view. A reflective learner will incorporate these unfiltered experiences - the successes and the mishaps - into a new sense of self, perhaps one that is more confident in its own talents and in possession of an expanded worldview.