Why I Chose Carleton (3 year anniversary)

Although I don’t remember the exact date, I know that it was somewhere around the beginning/middle of January when I first learned about Carleton. And so, in honor of the three-year anniversary, I thought I would share that story.

At my high school, we had to take the PSAT every year except for senior year. From the start, I was kind of torn about this. On the one hand, unless you do extremely well on it, the PSAT is largely useless except as practice for the SAT, and I did not really care about that test until I was a junior. So taking the test seemed to be little more than just a pain. On the other hand, we did get to leave school early that day, and that was always nice. But there remains one other “benefit” to the PSAT, one which any taker of the test who elected to give them their e-mail address should be quite familiar with. The PSAT will let various colleges see your scores, and then send you e-mails, lots and lots of e-mails. They came from all over, some schools I knew, others I did not. Some e-mailed me once, others every day for months (not an exaggeration). For the most part, I mostly just half-skimmed (yes, not even a full skim) the messages without learning anything new. Every colleges that contacted me was either one I already knew about, or one I had no interest in getting to know. Well, except for one.

At six in the morning I rose from my bed, questioning why I always leave the window open in January. As usual, I opened my computer to check my e-mail, with the rarely satisfied hope that school would be canceled for one reason or another. But instead of news of an unexpected day off, I got the usual, a pile of college e-mails. Most were met with the standard kind of skim and then delete formula, but one, and I really cannot remember why, caught my eye. That message came from Carleton. I had never heard of the school before, but decided to see what they had to say. Something in the letter must have grabbed me, because I immediately began googling them, and realized that this place looks pretty interesting and I should check them out further. And it’s probably good I did, otherwise I might not be here three years later, writing this blog. (Can we also agree that there’s something fitting about learning about Carleton on a frigid January morning?)

Well, there you have it, and to all readers who are currently looking for colleges, I recommend that you actually read those e-mails from time to time. Or, at least the ones from Carleton.

David is a sophomore from New York City who had an unexpectedly hard time finding a picture of himself to add to this biography. He is leaning towards Philosophy as a major, but we will see if that is still the case come Spring. When not being inept at using a computer, he enjoys writing and playing Ultimate Frisbee. Check back in the coming weeks to see if he ever finds more pictures of himself, amongst other adventures. Read on to meet the rest of our bloggers.