Before we begin this portion of the data analysis, we wanted to give a quick statement about why we began this project in the first place and what this data represents. Given that we are all students who have the opportunity to come to Carleton because of the admission office’s mission to reach out to communities around the U.S from Houston to Wisconsin, to Maryland, to Santa Fe we think that aspects of our background have led us to become closer but also provide new points of view for the Carleton ecosystem. I’m sure everyone reading this understands that having individuals from different backgrounds and life experiences within your institution allows for a more dynamic student life experience. Carleton Admissions already shows ways in which it wants to achieve this goal such as working with programs such as Posse and Questbridge, but we believe that this data and map could show how within the last 10 years Carleton Admissions could better serve the underrepresented areas where they might not be pulling students from at the moment. This analysis doesn’t provide a way in which admissions could reach those areas but more so brings attention to possible areas in which Carleton could hone in on to continue to make the student body diverse and provide a more dynamic student experience.
When it comes to the first part of our analysis we wanted to zoom into some areas in which we found that Carleton was recruiting a good amount of students. For the sake of consistency, we are choosing to consider underrepresented areas as places where there are large populations in poverty specifically greater than 50,000 people in poverty. When it comes to evaluating this it could very well be influenced by the population of those places being large or small and we will try to take this into account to the best of our ability. To begin with our analysis we want to look at California which within our other data analysis was consistently the second-highest percentage group of states. When looking at where students come from in California we can see that the majority of students come from LA County and Santa Clara County. You might be quick to say that specifically with LA County that population would be the influential factor but after doing some outside research and found that L.A. County leads California in poverty rate. Continuing with this theme of these places a trend we noticed was that the states that make up the larger slices of the admitted Carleton classes are the ones that seem to address the admittance of students from higher poverty areas than areas that make up the smaller slices of the classes. This can be seen in the makeup of the students from California, Illinois, and Minnesota. Where in the second image you can see the most densely populated county for Minnesota in the top left and Illinois in the bottom right. This trend could also be seen in New York and Massatuchas which are also in the upper epsilon of the Carleton student makeup.
Based on what we have seen so far, it seems as though Carleton’s admissions has done a good job in ensuring that the areas with a higher percentage of the student body come from areas with diverse socioeconomic environments. We then wanted to compare this to some areas with a smaller density of students from the state, and we noticed that many of these places also have students from higher poverty areas within these states. This could be seen below in both Texas and Florida.
To us, this seems interesting as the cost of attending Carleton is quite high, and only some students have the opportunity to afford it without significant financial aid or scholarships. This raises questions about how Carleton supports students from lower-income backgrounds and whether the financial aid packages are sufficient to make the institution accessible to a broader range of students. This could be seen recently in Carleton news with students not wanting to pay for the meal plan as classes after the class of 2026 will be required to be on it at all times.
Ultimately, this analysis started as a call to action for Carleton to refine its recruitment strategies to ensure there is a dynamic and realistic student body. After looking through the data and seeing where Carleton students are from we see that Carleton does in fact from a surface level ensure students from different backgrounds are in attendance. By continuing to do so, Carleton can continue to further enrich its campus community and uphold its mission of fostering a diverse and dynamic educational experience for all.