Looking back on my college search from its conclusion, I see how little I knew when I began. I knew I wanted a small liberal arts college. I knew I wanted a school with few or no graduate students so that the focus of the college, and specifically the professors, would be on the undergraduates. I knew I wanted a chance to develop a close relationship with my professors and to be involved in research. I knew I wanted a school of high academic quality, but I also knew I wanted to keep my distance from the Ivies. I knew I wanted to stay out of the city and to avoid party schools. I knew I wanted to be surrounded by intelligent classmates.
It might sound like I had a good idea of what I wanted, and I certainly believed I did. As it turns out, I was not emphasizing the most important thing enough: the people. From the second I began playing “ghost” with three fellow prospees on the shuttle from the Minneapolis airport to Carleton, I knew I could see myself going to school with these people. I met them at the airport at in the morning, and one more joined our group when we got to campus. We had lunch together, walked around the art gallery together, and we met up with another group of five at the rec center. We hung out there for a couple hours, caught the tour as a group, and met some new friends and played more “ghost” at admissions before dinner. With assigned seating, we were separated for dinner, but we met up again to sit together at the musical performance. After meeting our student hosts for the night, we all went to the s’mores and Arb walk event from 9-10. Only we met some more Carleton students and didn’t leave until , and when we did, we went to Sayles to play pool, play foosball, and watch hockey until . I spent almost all of 14 hours with these people I had just met from all over the country. From Georgia (2), Tennessee, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Maryland, North Carolina, and Massachusetts (2) there were ten of us who got along incredibly well. And we also met prospees from other places – Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas Hawai’i and Costa Rica to name a few.
