Carleton College Welcomes Class of 2017; 529 Students Hail From 45 States and 23 Countries

On Tuesday, September 10, Carleton College welcomes the Class of 2017 to campus. There are 529 students in the class, selected from a pool of 7,045 applicants. The students represent 45 states and 23 countries, with 92 students coming from Minnesota, followed by California (62), Illinois (54), Wisconsin (28), Washington (23), New York (22) and Massachusetts (21). Twenty new students hail from China.

Twenty-seven percent of the students identify themselves as people of color, 10 percent are among the first generation in their families to attend college, and 80 percent graduated in the top 10 percent of their class. Nine percent of the students come from countries outside of the United States.

Seventy-one members of the class are National Merit Scholars, one is a National Achievement Semifinalist, and seven are National Hispanic Recognition Scholars. Members of this year’s entering class have participated in a wide variety of extracurricular activities: 78 percent have participated in community service activities, 68 percent participated in one or more academic clubs, 57 percent have played a varsity sport, 51 percent play a musical instrument, and 43 percent were active in arts and drama activities.

The Class of 2017 includes students who speak American Sign Language, Arabic, Assyrian, Burmese, Chinese, Dutch, Ewe, French, German, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hindi, Hmong, Igbo, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Malayalam, Norwegian, Oromo, Panjabi (Eastern), Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Shona, Spanish, Swahili, Urdu, and Vietnamese.