Can anyone explain this ?

<p><a href="http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The source of this looked like reliable so I just wanted to ask you whether this can be true ? In this list of 50 school there isn't Carleton College. Does Carleton really so bad in placing students to Top Grad schools ?</p>

<p>I have wondered about this too. It seems a little strange, considering that Carleton is placed very high (behind Swarthmore only) for LACs producing PhDs(adjusted for enrolment size). I can think of three explanations:
1. Carleton does not put in enough effort into placement for professional schools, and does not promote itslef with prestigious professional schools.
2. Students in Carleton are more interested in pure science, rather than professional schools.
3. The WSJ survey has mostly east coast professional schools. For eg; I would argue that UCSF medical school is as good as the ones they surveyed. This could skew the result toward east coast schools.</p>

<p>Yeah, this seems heavily skewed toward east coast schools, plus Carleton sends virtually nobody to business school. Most Carleton students who go to grad school enter PhD programs.</p>

<p>I believe, as a Carleton student, that this is because students are more interested in academic PhD. programs than professional programs. I know for a fact that carleton students with a GPA of 3.6 or above nearly always get into top medical programs.</p>

<p>IceNine, what do you think of the Career counseling/ development office at Carleton? I have read elsewhere on CC that students found them helpful for Grad school placement, but not for jobs, internships or professional school placement.
Though I think the WSJ study is biased toward east coast schools, Grinnell, Reed, Macalester and Pomona make the list, Carleton does not.</p>