Click here to go to the NEW College Discussion Forum

For students attending Carleton or who were accepted and remember their aid package--how nice was Carleton with financial aid? Carleton has been my first choice school for some time now, but my concern with applying there is the money. I live in a family of six with about 60K annual income, and while I'd love to apply ED (with a 75% acceptance rate, how could I go wrong?), I'm really concerned about money. I'm not asking for a full-ride or anything obscene, but how do Carleton aid packages compare to those of other schools? Or ED vs RD? I'm the kind of person with the great grades and classes and numbers but crappy unfocused ECs I could see them rejecting RD and I REALLY want to go there. Does anyone have any input on this?

By Heartwork (Heartwork) on Wednesday, June 11, 2003 - 04:46 pm: Edit

What are your stats?

By Useatoothbrush (Useatoothbrush) on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 - 03:25 am: Edit

Wow, this is a really late reply to this, sorry...

white female, WA state, attending a public high school with a good reputation for colleges in a wealthy area but my family isn't wealthy, oldest of four kids, first-generation college, needs $$$

1560 SAT (800M 760V), 800/800/800 Math IIc/Physics/Writing (76 essay subscore :'-( ), 4.0 unweighted GPA (no weighted available), rank 1 (tied with between 5 and 10 others, not sure) out of about 300, hardest curriculum with accelerated math and science levels (i.e. up a year, AP calc as a junior which is apparently a big deal here), honors everything, will be a NM semi-finalist (230 index)

ECs (nearly exhaustively): math club secretary junior year and president senior year, state awards at math competitions, knowledge bowl captain and 4th place team at state, cross-country since 10th grade, full-time job this summer as an office/personal assistant plus correspondence work on education theory with a mentor of mine who will give me fantastic recommendations with some serious clout to them, Girls State Supreme Court justice 2003, techie work (at least 80 hours but probably more like 100) for spring school musical, recreational soccer every fall and spring since 6th grade, some school departmental awards, tutoring/community service, and the obligatory NHS membership

So...do I have room to fanangle any •••••• aid packages from Carleton or should I apply RD everywhere and compare? While Carleton is my top choice, I'm only applying to schools that I'd really like to go to and so I might end up where better money is. You can see a preliminary list of schools I might be applying to up at http://pr.damnsw.net/display.php?user=useatoothbrush. I think I will add Stanford and take Whitman off, though. I should add that I will be visiting both Carleton and Macalester this summer and doing interviews there (if I can), since I know both those schools care if the student is actually interested in going there.

By Geniusash (Geniusash) on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 05:57 pm: Edit

You'll get their only merit scholarship, for your NM finalist status. I visited Carleton, and live close by. It seems they don't give much fin aid because they want only students who are really commited (aka willing to go into debt) to apply. I'm glad your visiting Macalester, the enviroment there is very similar to Carleton (in my opinion), plus they give much more aid.