Carleton College is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. It is a small school, with an undergraduate enrollment of only 2,078 students, but on a big campus. The Carleton campus includes an 880-acre arboretum, so if you’re interested in the natural sciences, it may be the perfect place for you. Carleton is also a great choice if you are looking to have an active on-campus community without sacrificing opportunities to study abroad. Over 95% of Carleton students live on campus, but 75% study off-campus at some point during their time there. Off-campus programs include study abroad and domestic opportunities such as the wilderness studies program in the Grand Canyon or the public health in practice program in Washington, D.C.  The acceptance rate for Carleton is about 21%.

The Carleton supplement has six questions, most of which are short by supplement standards. Short answers don’t mean a fast supplement, though. The questions are specific and a little tricky, so this is not a supplement that you should be rushing through.

When did you first learn of Carleton? (no more than 150 words)

With only 150 words, you must keep this supplement simple. This question is mostly for the marketing team so that they know where their money is doing the most to get kids like you to apply. However, that doesn’t make it a throw-away question. Always remember that each piece of writing that you do for your application, even just 150 words, is an opportunity to show that you can express yourself clearly. With this supplement, there is space to tell a small story. Don’t try to tell an epic tale of how you discovered the mythical Carleton in the corner of a college fair. Do talk about overhearing a college conversation between classmates or hearing about it from a friend, and how you went from knowing the name Carleton to wanting to be part of Carleton.

Why are you applying to Carleton? (no more than 150 words)

This is where you need to have something to say, and with only 150 words, you need to craft your response carefully. It’s short, but there is plenty of room to be specific — and there are a few things about which you must be precise. First, you need to state your intended major clearly. If you are not sure what you are majoring in, that’s ok in the real world, but it’s not ok in application land. After all, remember that you are not committing to an academic path by saying what you would like to theoretically, possibly major in. When selecting a major, pick something congruent with your current academic pursuits. If you’ve sought out every English and writing class your school offers, that’s a pretty strong hint. Same goes for any other subject. Being able to show continuity between your current interests and what you hope to do in the future is critical to a strong answer.

After you have ‘chosen’ a major, you need to share the name of a class within that major that you would like to take and why. The class you select should be an elective, not a core requirement. Typically, they are easy to tell apart. Electives are more specific. The final thing that you need to include is a professor that you would like to study under and why. Find someone in your major department who specializes in an area of interest for you and triple-check that you spell their name right.

Before closing out your response, remember that colleges aren’t just places for academic pursuit. Share something that has drawn you to Carleton that makes it both unique and the perfect fit for you.  

Please complete the following 3 questions (each in 300 characters or less), and have a little fun doing so:

We love these prompts! Yes, they’re very short (that’s 300 characters, not 300 words) and writing well in a hyper-concise format is very hard. This makes it a quick way to separate strong writers from more middle-of-the-road applicants. If you can show yourself to be a strong writer, it dramatically increases your chances of admission.

Before starting, remember that you have been given permission to have fun with these answers, and you should, but it’s not a permission slip to be sloppy. You need to think just as hard about these short little supplements as you do about a 250-word answer. Consider trying out different voices and storytelling styles. Test different responses until something feels good, and make sure that you are editing yourself along the way to keep everything neat and clean.

I am empowered by people who…

For this prompt, you need to be specific. However, you should not specify a particular individual unless they serve to highlight a particular set of traits that is not unique to them. Carleton wants to know about a type of person. Secondly, take note of how the word is “empowered,” not “inspired.” We typically hear this question with the word “inspired” in the place of “empowered.” They are not interchangeable, so it’s important to sit and think for a minute about the difference between the two. Inspiration drives you forward or lifts you up. Empowerment makes you feel stronger and more powerful. Similar, you see, but not the same.

If we were answering this prompt, we might write about how we are empowered by the two or three runners who beat us in every cross-country race in high school because they showed us what was possible. We run better with their legs trotting ahead of us, just out of reach. In this answer, the runners are representative of people who are just ahead of us in our pursuits. They aren’t so far ahead as to make advancing to their level feel impossible, though. They are right there, just out of reach, but not for long.  To make it more interesting, we may write this as a super short story that drops the reader into the middle of a race — all in about four sentences.

I appreciate my community because ...

For this prompt, we like to pair together something that can be felt and appreciated universally with an aspect of your community that feels unique. In it, the novel is illuminated by the universal, and the novel illustrates the universal. We might write about how our town has communicated through a period of ideological conflict related to the development of a controversial piece of land. Despite a lack of agreement on the issue, the community still comes together for movie nights in the park, firehouse cookouts, and town-wide yard sales. The universal in this answer is the positive impact of a town being willing to bridge political and ideological gaps to become a stronger community.

In the future, I hope to explore…

This is an excellent place to be very specific and to get to play a micro-game of make-belief. It is an opportunity to link your academic interests to real-world applications. Do you want to study the eating habits of giant squids? Do you want to follow Lewis & Clark’s path on foot? Do you dream of discovering the secrets of the past in ancient ruins? Tell the story of something that you want to explore, an idea, or a place, while setting it within the context of your academic interests and extracurricular experiences. Have double fun with this one!

Also: Is there any additional information you feel we need to know regarding your application? (Optional, no more than 250 words)

This supplement is listed as optional, but it’s not. We mean, it is. But it’s not for you. In your application, you only have so much space to make a case for yourself. Why give up space just because it says you don’t have to use it?

Before answering, take a look back at the list of five or so things that you want to highlight in your application (and if you haven’t made that list, please do it now!). Identify the one that appears least, or not at all, in your application so far. Then focus this supplement on it. Often this is a job or responsibility outside of school that has impacted your life or even your academic performance. This is not, however, a place to make excuses. It is a place to continue to make a case for yourself in a creative, engaging, and well-written way that puts stories first.  

Let us know if you need help writing your supplements. We’re pros.