"Carleton-off list. No merit opportunities but otherwise it just wasn’t a fit. Maybe too sporty, preppy? Not sure. "
Interesting reaction. I wouldn’t use either sporty or preppy as adjectives to define Carleton. I guess it is relative to other schools one is looking at.
I suppose. Those are my words though. I’m not really sure why it didn’t resonate. I think maybe she was turned off by the remote feeling of the town in general. Diversity of all kinds has been a common theme too in our college visits. Her HS is probably one of the most diverse in the country. Liberal Arts schools generally don’t have that much. So I anticipate this being an issue as we continue the journey.
She first loved Georgetown but the more she thought about it, she just didn’t love the location and campus. Wake is the “family” school dad and a sister went there and it’s close to home. Vandy she just couldn’t see herself there. UPenn I think she will pursue for Grad School. All great schools just look for the right fit for yourself.
@Veryapparent Just a note about the freshman dorms at Macalester. They are pretty drab, it’s true, but I must say that my daughter’s room is so much bigger than most of her friends freshman dorms at other schools and she has a ton of storage space. There is one freshman dorm building where the rooms are very tiny, but luckily she was not placed there. The location of Mac simply fantastic. It’s so great for the students to have so many places to go within walking distance plus a great public transportation system. This is a rarity among liberal arts schools! Best of luck in your continued search.
Well she really liked it despite the dorms so I don’t think it’s an issue! Good to know there are other options. So wondering if you had any knowledge of the music program? I thought with viola in your name you might!
I agree on the location. Plus the leaves were in full color…just gorgeous neighborhood. Happened upon a cheese shop that was incredible!
@Veryapparent My S19 and husband were at Carleton and Mac this last weekend. S19 definitely felt the preppy/sporty factor at Carleton but, for him, it felt very familiar and he liked it. I think he mostly got that impression from seeing all of the Patagonia winter wear on the students, so I don’t know if it’s a legitimate way to describe the vibe. We did hear in advance of the trip that Carleton is probably the most sporty Midwestern LAC.
@homerdog Funny that you mention winter wear as the primarily indicator of whether there is a “preppy” factor. My son goes to Bowdoin and when I asked him if there’s any signs of conspicuous wealth or privilege among the students he said generally no with the exception of the large number of those who wear Canada Goose coats in the winter… I guess outerwear is an easy litmus test for wealth.
@citivas Interesting! Canada Goose is WAY more expensive than Patagonia so what does that say about Bowdon vs. Carleton? LOL. Our neighbors sent one of their daughters to Bowdoin and one to Carleton. They probably owned the same brand of coat though.
I told S19 that kids need a good winter coat at these schools. It’s maybe where they spend their money. Who knows what they were wearing underneath the coats.
I’d have to disagree with Carleton being sporty or preppy. Or if they are, someone forget to forward the sports teams the memo. They are not known for their athletics. St. Olaf is usually considered more “sporty”, though neither is exactly a jock school.
Sometimes just the few students you interact with on a visit can color your impressions of a school. You might have just run into the few that matched that vibe.
The admissions guy hilariously described Carleton as the “School for Nerds, before it became cool to be a Nerd”. I wouldn’t go so far, but “sporty” is too far in the other direction. What I basically saw was young, healthy adults who dressed however they felt like.
Oooh. I just want to clarify that I didn’t mean anything negative about Carleton being sporty. S19 just sensed that the kids seemed more sporty-looking that the kids he saw at say, Grinnell or Macalester. It was a cold, windy day with flurries when they visited so he didn’t see anyone actually being sporty outside. I wasn’t on this trip and my husband didn’t have any impression one way or the other about the sportiness. His main impression was that the kids seemed exceptional.
It’s been mentioned over and over (and over) on this thread, but it bears repeating: Descriptors for colleges are quite subjective; therefore, what is preppy or sporty to one observer might be quite the opposite to another, even when observing exactly the same thing.
Therefore, debates on whether the College of X or Y University are [insert adjective here] are doomed to failure, especially on a thread like this one where it’s all about perception.
Yeah, huge difference between Patagonia and Canada Goose.
Patagonia will run you between $150 and $300 but you can often get huge discounts on sale/past season’s styles. The quality is very good. Personally, I don’t consider the brand overly preppy at all. It is a brand that gets more traction with the outdoorsy crowd due to its quality. If there is anyplace you need a good winter coat, it is MN in the winter. 
“Therefore, debates on whether the College of X or Y University are [insert adjective here] are doomed to failure, especially on a thread like this one where it’s all about perception.”
Of course it is perception, but it can be helpful to give different impressions at times. As I mentioned pages back, I think people should take this thread with a huge grain of salt and do their own due diligence. Surprisingly, my comments were pushed back on quite heavily. So, if folks are going to use comments made here as some kind of litmus test for devising their lists, I’ll mention when I have a different perception or experience.
Don’t tell that to the Women’s XC team at Carleton, currently ranked 9th in D3 (and above most every Nescac school, that is commonly referred to as sporty on CC). And here’s a wow - MIT, a school which I would venture to say rarely has the word sporty in the same sentence, is ranked #2.
And poor CU Boulder has to settle with being the Northface captial. We were at a football game and looking down at all those in front of us, every right shoulder sported a Northface logo.
I’ll add my voice to the side arguing that Carleton is neither “preppy” nor “sporty” overall. Because of its diverse student body, of course there will be some who love sports and some who could be classified as preppy. That said, the most noted sport at Carleton is Ultimate Frisbee.
I am both an Carleton alum and a parent of a current Carl. Raised as a right-coaster. I fled my Massachusetts prep-school background and those there who fondly displayed their wealth/status, heading to the more grounded and egalitarian campus of Carleton, where both respect of individual differences and an environment of excellence prevailed. And it still does.
Please view a 50th-reunion memoir from a 1959 grad, linked here: https://apps.carleton.edu/alumni/classes/1959/blog/?story_id=499503.
I discovered this piece only today on the internet, and it captures the spirit of the campus.
The fourth paragraph of the above-linked memoir captures the egalitarian campus Carleton was in 1959, was for me in the '70s and is for our daughter today. I probably came across as a bit of a prep-butt back in the day. And the closest I became to passing myself off as a jock was for two hours, entertaining the full-stadium crowd (the second-time-ever in history that Laird Stadium was packed) as one of the ridiculous cheerleaders during the fall 1977 Metric Football Game against St. Olaf. Would you believe I still don’t grasp the metric system? A pint at the Rueb ‘N’ Stein was always more satisfying, anyway.
Keep the impressions coming, though.
@wisteria100 Our son runs XC and it’s the sport at our school that pulls from the brightest group of kids. So…a college with bright kids and good runners certainly appeals to him. And he loves ultimate. Doesn’t play on a team (our high school does not have one) but won MVP two years running at the ultimate frisbee tournament at Wisconsin during XC camp!
@MinnesotaDadof3 Interesting that you raised the diversity issue. The dean who spoke at our visit said that there are no cliques because each student is different in their own way from the other students. If that is true, then kudos to the AOs who can make that happen.
“Our son runs XC and it’s the sport at our school that pulls from the brightest group of kids. So…a college with bright kids and good runners certainly appeals to him. And he loves ultimate.”
I still think you need to get your son to consider Haverford, @homerdog. I actually think Haverford and Carleton have a lot of overlap in student bodies/vibes backed up by my kids having the same impressions. I’m a big fan of both schools.
I think the surprised reaction here to Carleton being called “sporty” or “preppy” is because the original poster was mentioning it in the context of a co-visit to nearby St Olaf. Usually, most people would say that St Olaf is the one which is the more sporty or preppy school of the two. No disrespect to our wonderful athletes, but I would not use the word “sporty” to describe Carleton. My freshman year RA was on Carleton’s esteemed Men’s XC team, and I never heard him describe our school as sporty or jocky or preppy either. I think a better term might be “outdoorsy”. There’s a sort of “back to the land” vibe (the term used back in the 70s and 80s was “earthy”). In any case, I certainly would not describe Carleton as “preppy”.
Jock school, preppy school, crunchy school, sporty school, lefty school, righty school, party school, geek school, greek school.
I hope our children have the ability to bring a little more analysis to bear on their college choices…
Carleton’s men’s D1 Ultimate team won D1 men’s college nationals last year, and their women’s D3 Ultimate team won D3 women’s college nationals. Ultimate is so popular there that they compete in both D1 and D3 for men’s and women’s (their women’s D1 team has won nationals in the past). Their Ultimate players are terrific athletes, so the school is sporty in that sense, even if not in more traditional sports.
My kid found it not the vibe he was looking for (he realized he wanted something larger and in or near a city), but we know others who love it there who are neither preppy nor sporty, and some who love it there who play Ultimate and are sporty.