Zoobook Final Group Project Pitch

Group Members:

Ethan Ash, Jenna Young, Kenton Young, Margo Lewis

Proposal:

For our project, we plan on creating a map and statistical analysis of the high schools that each Carleton freshman graduated from since 1990. We aim to specifically look at which schools send the highest number of students to Carleton and how many of those schools are private versus public.

Sources:

We plan on using the zoobook data from the Carleton digital collections, and then comparing it to public school and private school databases by the NCES to get school information and location.

Processes:

We will likely use a Python library like pdfminer.six in order to convert the zoobook pdfs into plain text. Once we have that, we will need to clean the data manually to get the high school separated from the city/state of the student. We will then use ArcGIS to map the high schools, and use some kind of data-displaying software like Excel to display and visualize the high school data.

Presentation:

We will display our project in part via an interactive ArcGIS map that the user can explore, and also via visual representations and graphs of our findings so that a user can quickly understand the data and findings relating to what kinds of high schools sent students to Carleton.

Proposed timeline:

Week 8: Scrape data from the zoobook and create/clean the dataset.

Week 9: Create a map and other graphs to visualize data

Week 10: Create and deliver presentation

Similar Model Project:

Carls around the World

Personal Interests:

Jenna: I am interested in this project because I am curious what the most popular high schools and how that has changed over time. Through this data I also want to look at if there is a common state that most Carleton students come from over time as well. I think that this would be fun to model on a map

Margot: I think it will be interesting to see if there are patterns in what high schools Carleton students have come from and if it has shifted over time. It will be interesting to create a map to see what states are most popular.

Kenton: I am interested in exploring the division between private and public schools and its impact on students at Carleton College, which reflects a broader societal dynamic shaped by geography and socioeconomic factors. Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, where private school options were limited, my experience contrasts with the significant presence of private school alumni at Carleton. This project will allow me to analyze how class dynamics intersect with educational backgrounds, shedding light on disparities in access and privilege while fostering dialogue about equity and inclusion in higher education.

Ethan: I am very interested in how high school has an effect on college admissions and how much of an elite environment there is when deciding admittance to a prestigious school like Carleton. I think that being aware of how Carleton is accepting students based on their school is an important part of becoming an inclusive and aware institution, and this project can bring to light some of these unknowns. This project will also allow us to see how Carleton has shifted over time and whether we are trending towards a more inclusive environment or whether we have stayed mostly the same, something which I am personally very interested in.