Hello! I am a prospective applicant for Dartmouth and a couple other Ivy league schools, as well as a bunch of liberal arts colleges like Williams or Middlebury. I’m trying to figure out which places are likely to have an atmosphere that prioritizes cooperation over competition. I’ve heard that Columbia is nastily competitive. I’d like to avoid that.
Essentially, can somebody tell me how competitive the Dartmouth student body is with each other, and what that looks like relative to schools of similar stature, like the ones I’ve mentioned? Thanks.
Dartmouth is very similar to top LACs. The environment is definitely collaborative, rather than cutthroat. I ended up choosing between Dartmouth and Bowdoin and ultimately chose Dartmouth because it was bigger (but not too big), more diverse, and offered more opportunities.
My own personal experience was incredibly cooperative. Dartmouth students are competitive, sure, but it is much more competitive within themselves where they are always pushing themselves. This never manifested as a competitive streak among students from everything I saw. On the contrary, I would have no issues asking someone in my class to teach me something I didn’t understand, and working on problem sets together always had an air of teamwork. I had heard rumors and legends of other cutthroat schools, but I truly never saw anyone take part in that at Dartmouth. Even the multiple valedictorians all sitting at a 4.0 seemed genuinely happy for those tied with them.