Are you planning on ED'ing without having visited the school?

Applying to College Early Decision / Early Action
21

We insisted that any contender for ED had to have a visit. But we got lucky that the ED choices were within a 300 mile radius with good train options; if we’d been flying around it would have likely been a little different.

I’d just challenge you a bit on him liking Yale (or finding it acceptable) if he’s ruling out cities. As you saw, Yale is SMACK DAB in the middle of New Haven, and other than the green and the quad where freshman live, it is hard to ignore the sheer “urban-ness” of it all. So if he is categorically ruling out some schools which aren’t as “fit particular” as Dartmouth is, I’d encourage him to give that a think.

People either love Dartmouth or intensely dislike it. And I don’t think it’s the location (kids who are turned off by the location don’t visit it, or apply, or even give it much thought). The social scene is pretty particular… and that either works for a kid or not.

One of mine was very interested until we attended an info session (in a city near us, not in Hanover). And the two adcom’s could NOT stop discussing skiing options, winter festivals, snow activities, etc. I’m sure there are students at Dartmouth who do not ski and don’t particularly like snow-- but it was VERY hard to get the adcom’s to address “what do those kids do when they aren’t in class or the library or the lab”.

If it’s affordable and possible- I’d encourage a visit. Maybe an overnight on a weekend?

22

S24s GC said the same to him about his ED school - she felt it might help a tiny bit, but (and it’s a big but) the pool is stronger so the competition is stiffer. Now, there are schools where ED makes a big difference even after accounting for legacies, athletes and the like but Dartmouth isn’t one of them.

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23

Lafayette, Bucknell and Lehigh all have
Engineering and strong liberal arts. I know Lafayette has an AB engineering degree (the other two may as well) that allows the student to get the best of both worlds. It seems like that might be a good match. Also Lehigh and Lafayette meet his non urban criteria without being as remote as Hanover New Hampshire. Bucknell definitely more rural than the other two.

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24

Again, I don’t know your son and I hope the best for him, but this sounds like a situation that could end up in disaster - in part because:

  1. Many ECs are closed or they’re led by Juniors/Seniors. My son was all excited to work on the project he joined - and the first two year students were all pushed aside and given crumbs.

  2. I get the humanities - and you can do engineering and a humanities at many schools - a minor, double major - but if you have a degree that’s not ABET accredited, you’re going to have a tough time. Yes, you can do the fifth year, but that’s more time and money and most kids are burned out on school after four years (especially engineering)…before four years.

Is there any way you can get there? While it would be pricey and I don’t know your monetary situation, if full pay - it seems like a last minute trip would pale in expense compared to the near $400K expense over four years.

Who else is on his list?

Whatever he decides, best of luck.

25

I think experienced GCs are really, really helpful here. Like, I always think the question is less whether there is an advantage, and more which applicants get a material advantage. An experienced GC who can give you an informed guess as to whether YOU might get a material advantage is, to me, way more valuable than people just trading aggregate statistics for different pools.

Of course none of this matters if you have a clear favorite, and it is comfortably affordable. But as soon as people start talking about it more strategically, I get really nervous on their behalf if they are just relying on aggregate statistics.

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26

I agree 100%. My son is unhooked so his ED school is, obviously, a long shot. However, it is his clear favorite, affordable to us and his GC thought he might get a very slight advantage by going ED.

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27

It would have been a hard no to EDing without a visit for our family.

I also agree with the above posters that Dartmouth is very much a fit school. Even back in my day it was high on my list until I visited. It was so not a good fit for me that I withdrew my application, which had already been submitted.

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28

I really do appreciate all the thoughtful responses.

We definitely have food for thought.

29

I guess, the thing I keep coming back to, is would a visit shed any more light on the current unknowables. Would a visit answer the question, this place is to Greeky and alcohol infused for me? Or does it just depend on what tour guide you get?

I suppose I’m asking a larger probably academic question. Of all the people who have visited a school and said, I don’t want to go here for x, y and z reason, if they HAD gone there, would x, y and z actually have been the case? Or people who went to a school because they because they loved this visit, did all the things they loved about it on the visit turn out to be true in reality.

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30

Just curious if Cornell was on the list at all…

31

Hopefully the student walks around “beyond” a tour guide - goes into buildings, stops kids outside the school which houses the major of interest and talks to kids, eats in the dining hall, walks the surrounding town, even has an academic visit.

If you just showed up and did the info session, tour, and left - then it likely wasn’t the most productive of visits.

My kids both had strong feelings - just from being on campus - either a yay or a nay.

If it was a feeling of ambivalence - well that doesn’t say to me - I want to be here; I want to spend $400K of my parents hard earned money on being here.

To answer your last question:

There are people that go to their dream school and hate it - lonely, bad profs, bad roommies, bad food.

And there’s people that feel “forced” to attend a school - and end up thinking they could never imagine themselves anywhere else.

There are likely many schools a student can like - if everything works out right - with the roommate, dining, classes, etc.

But in business today, when you make decisions backed by data, you tend to make better decisions.

There’s no assurance if he goes and loves it, he’d actually love it or if he went and didn’t like it, that if he was forced to attend - that he wouldn’t like it. But it’s an odds thing.

The other thing is - if he’s that ambivalent in general, he may come to his senses at some point and get strong feelings.

It’s just tough to justify ED’ing - but of course it’s your families choice.

To me, you ED when you can absolutely, 100%, without any hesitation say - this is my home for the next four years!!! And it just doesn’t seem like that’s remotely the case.

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32

My sibling – many years ago – was high on Dartmouth until the visit. This was not so long after it had gone co-ed, and the “boys club” feeling was really distasteful/intimidating to her. Note that several women friends of mine were in those early classes and were comfortable holding their own, so tastes vary.

DS didn’t consider Dartmouth. He attended Colby, which shares some vibe elements with Dartmouth. (No Greek life, but very outdoorsy/winter sporty.) He has graduated but has many good friends from Dartmouth, and I can imagine that many kids who liked Colby but wanted engineering would have been attracted to Dartmouth. There is definitely an overlap, culturally.

Oddly, most of the kids I have known who chose Dartmouth of late were kids I would not have considered to be natural fits there, so while there is a dominant culture, there are clearly quite a few kids outside it.

This is why I think trying to figure out what he shares with his fanatically-loving- Dartmouth friends is key.

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33

Obviously it is nearly impossible to get good information on counterfactuals like that, since they didn’t go.

My general attitude is that because there are so many fish in the sea, why risk it? It is true they might like it better than expected. It is true they might not like another college as much as expected. But why actually choose to start that way?

Of course this assumes you have identified a robust list of alternatives. People who have significant practical constraints, like cost, may not have such a list.

But that is unlikely to be true with a college like Dartmouth.

I guess this is pointing to the question of whether the unnamed EC (and I get why it is unnamed) is really all that unique. Because off hand, Dartmouth’s setting is not so unique, nor is what it offers academically, nor is the combination of the two.

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34

Yes, and we visited. His response to Cornell was the same as most other schools.

  • Sure, it’s fine.
  • Great. Would you consider ED here?
  • Shrug. Not really. I don’t love it at the exclusion of all else.

My guess is if we DID visit Dartmouth, his response would be exactly the same. I don’t think it’s an accident that the ED school is one we didn’t visit. Maybe it’s the attractiveness of the place in concept or imagination which is dispelled once feet are actually on the ground.

So then why bother ED? I guess it comes back to the admissions odds question. If that truly doesn’t provide much of a bump, then I agree, not much point.

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35

I mean, if he liked Cornell well enough, it’s by far the better school for engineering. And he’d still get the strong liberal arts education.

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36

I will also say that your kid sounds very similar to my S23 in personality, and some of the preferences (or lack thereof) he expressed at this stage in his college search. We needed big aid $, so ED was never an option for him. He liked most of the schools we visited but wasn’t captured by any one school.

He had plenty of offers he was happy about. He is not an indecisive person, but it took him until almost the May 1 deadline to figure out where he wanted to go. That’s because introspection is difficult for him and that process took a while for him. He had all his apps in by mid-Oct. He steadily crossed schools off the list as the months went by. But we’re all glad that he had those ~6 months to really digest his options and form HIS opinions. He also did spring admitted student visits to his 3 finalists, which really helped.

Just some things to think about as the ED1 deadlines near.

p.s. One non-negotiable for him was ABET-accreditation of a variety of 4-year engineering majors at each school.

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37

Cornell has many sub-cultures so is a more versatile social environment than Dartmouth.

Ymmv.

My kids got a LOT out of visiting. They had meals with actual students, they went to meetings of a few EC’s they thought they were interested in, they struck up random conversations with students drinking coffee off campus. The tours were pretty generic after the first three or so (study abroad, coats for the homeless, free shuttle bus for late nights in the library check check check). But talking to random students was more illuminating. There are colleges where almost anyone can find their peeps, and colleges where a kid will have to be very extroverted and intentional to make it work…

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38

Pretty much sums him up. Assuming he doesn’t get in ED (if he does in fact ED), and assuming (hopefully) that he ends up with good choices, I have no doubt that he’ll make his decision on May 1 and not a day before. :slight_smile:

Comments about Cornell and others are right on. It’s really the EC that’s putting Dartmouth over the top. Which is a little crazy because he may end up hating the EC, or finding that he doesn’t have time for it, or a gazillion other things. Sigh.

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39

My kid ( a champion and skilled debater in HS) lasted two weeks on a university debate team! Travel debate in HS means getting home at 9 pm on competition days. Debate in college meant an entire weekend away…and trying to do problem sets and group projects without anyone from your class on the road with you…

Maybe a weekend with a Dartmouth kid in this EC will help???

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40

My husband loved his EC at Dartmouth. He loved it so much that he spent more time doing that EC than he did going to and passing classes. So…he had to leave Dartmouth.

Three other family members really love the outdoors and graduated from Dartmouth…but they didn’t really have a lot of time to enjoy the outing club activities as much as they thought they would. Still…they all loved Dartmouth and did graduate.

I agree…it’s a “fit” school.

As far as being far away…the Dartmouth Bus runs to Boston I think every day…and more than once when there are school breaks.

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