by our College Data Analytics Team
College Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities in its annual rankings and ranks them in a variety of ways, including most diverse, best overall quality, best for non-traditional students, and much more.
Carleton College was awarded 12 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is social sciences.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Carleton is ranked #245 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 2025 Best Colleges list. This puts it in the top 20% of all schools in the nation.
Out of the 52 colleges in Minnesota, Carleton is ranked at #4.
Even if you have the best grades and high test scores, that may not be enough to get into Carleton since the school has one of the most selective in the country. Its acceptance rate is a mere 17%, so there's no shame if you don't get in. Be sure to apply to other schools just in case.
About 37% of students accepted to Carleton submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 710 and 770. Math scores were between 720 and 780.
The student to faculty ratio at Carleton is an impressive 8 to 1. That's quite good when you compare it to the national average of 15 to 1. This is a good sign that students at the school will have more opportunities for one-on-one interactions with their professors.
Another measure that is often used to estimate how much access students will have to their professors is how many faculty members are full-time. The idea here is that part-time faculty tend to spend less time on campus, so they may not be as available to students as full-timers.
The full-time faculty percentage at Carleton College is 80%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
Carleton College has a freshmen retention rate of 95%. That's a good sign that full-time students like the school and their professors enough to want to stick around for another year. It's also a sign that the admissions team did a good job in choosing applicants who were a good fit for the school.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At Carleton the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 88%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Carleton College.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 1,940 undergraduates at Carleton with 1,918 being full-time and 22 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $11,645 | $8,456 | $12,453 | $21,520 | $41,301 |
The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.Note that the net price is typically less than the published for a school. For more information on the sticker price of Carleton, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
It's not uncommon for college students to take out loans to pay for school. In fact, almost 66% of students nationwide depend at least partially on loans. At Carleton, approximately 41% of students took out student loans averaging $4,492 a year. That adds up to $17,968 over four years for those students.
Get more details about the location of Carleton College.
Contact details for Carleton are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | One North College Street, Northfield, MN 55057 |
| Phone: | 507-222-4000 |
| Website: | https://www.carleton.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| General Biology | 59 | $30,726 |
| Computer Science | 59 | $88,132 |
| International Relations & National Security | 56 | NA |
| Child Development & Psychology | 43 | $39,238 |
| Mathematics | 38 | NA |
| Economics | 34 | $66,567 |
| Chemistry | 33 | NA |
| Physics | 28 | NA |
| Statistics | 18 | NA |
| Geological & Earth Sciences | 18 | $40,371 |
If you’re considering Carleton College, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Carleton? Pit them head to head with College Combat, our free interactive tool that lets you compare college on the features that matter most to you!
Footnotes
*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.