Dartmouth College Class of 2022 ED Discussion!

From everything I read, not getting an interview means nothing especially if you live in an area where there may be no local alumni interviewer. Remember that interviewers are busy people who are doing this in their spare time and they probably just recently got assigned their contacts. Imo, there is still plenty of time for you to be contacted.

@Seungheehan1, as explained earlier, interviews are done by volunteer alumni. There’s no “offer” involved and your college counselor is 100 percent wrong if s/he interprets anything about not having an interview affecting your chances. If there aren’t enough volunteers in your area or enough alumni who have said they’d do Skype interviews, you won’t be interviewed and it will have absolutely no effect whatsoever on your application. Really. I wish our reports had more influence, because many of us would love to see more of the exceptional students we interview accepted, but that’s just not how it works. We don’t work for admissions and we have very, very little impact on decisions. It’s much more of an opportunity for students to learn more about Dartmouth and for alumni to show our passion/love for the college. In some small number of cases, that may translate into students who are accepted being more likely to enroll.

And again, we are volunteers and are busy. Some district enrollment directors (also alumni volunteers!) may not even have contacted their interviewers yet. I know I had to turn down a couple of interviews this week, and my guess is they haven’t been reassigned yet and so the interviewer couldn’t have even contacted his or her interviewees. So… please… be patient and don’t read anything into this. There’s enough crazy-making anxiety about the college admissions process, but the alumni interview shouldn’t be one of them.

If you don’t believe me, please read what Dartmouth says about the interviews:
https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/apply/choose-your-path/early-decision/interviews

My interview is on skype as well! Does anyone else think about your application about 100 times a day? Its killing me.

@bubbles3388 totally. it’s always in the back of my mind!

i just had my interview over skype and i think it went really well! nothing to stress over and my interviewer was awesome!

Let’s see. last year Dartmouth accepted 555 on the ED round. They received 1999 applications which was their largest ever. That is an acceptance rate of 27.7% in ED. After it was all set and done, 500 of those enrolled out of the total class of 1,207. Running some numbers that means that 41.4% of the class came from ED. I suppose that many of those are legacies and athletes but still the chances in ED seem to be much better than RD.

Last year they overshot their goal of 1,150 and enrolled 1,207. I heard they had to move some people around in housing to accommodate them. This year they are going to stick to the 1,150. The question is how do they manage so that it doesn’t happen again? Do they make heavier use of the wait list in RD? Do any of you think that the ED numbers and acceptance rate will be different than last year?

@debrees Curious what the 55 accepted ED students did not attend… I had also read they were going to increase the number admitted- where did you hear the goal of 1150 is to remain?

Lee Coffin who is the Dean of Admissions recently gave a talk and mentioned the number of 1,150 (google youtube Lee Coffin pomfret). I found the whole talk really interesting. He goes into detail on how they review applications.

@debrees Thank You and best of luck to you!

I don’t know the reasons why if they accept 555 in ED only 500 enroll. I thought it was obligatory to enroll. Could be because of financial reasons, rescission, or gap years. I don’t know. Maybe somebody else knows the answer.

dartmouth lets you back out of ed if your financial aid package isn’t enough, although i thought the number was kind of high. as for overenrollment, i think the rd pool will take the hit from that, but the ed should stay roughly the same–just my opinion though; come december i could be eating my words.

also- i know you’re supposed to send thank-you notes for interviews, but mine was over skype. should i email a thank you because i don’t have means to contact them otherwise?

@cambellsoup, an email would be lovely. An email thank you is fine for in-person interviews too. Most kids don’t send them, so it’s nice to receive a brief acknowledgement of our time.

@TTdd16 thank you for your advice!

does anyone know the exact amount of legacies and athletes that get accepted ED?

Legacies gives a minor bump only and they’ve still got to have great stats. All four of a friend’s kids–all very strong students–were denied, and I know plenty of cases where both parents were alums and their kids weren’t accepted. What does matter in ED are recruited athletes. I’ve heard there are typically about 100, so it’s a significant number.

Legacies are told to apply early cause it increases their chances, is what I have heard, and that ~ 14% of the classes are made up of legacy

Hello! I’m an ED applicant as well! My alumni interview is tomorrow. Has anyone had an actual interview yet? I’m very nervous but excited at the same time.

My D had one, it was very low key, they chatted about her academics, extracurriculars and career goals

@oscar63, 9 percent of the class of 2021 offered admission were legacies, not 14 percent. Here’s the breakdown for both EA and RD:
51 percent of accepted U.S. citizens and permanent residents are students of color
9 percent are the children of Dartmouth undergraduate alumni
15 percent are first-generation college bound
10 percent are recruited athletes
Engineering, economics, biology, government/international relations, and English are the most popular anticipated majors.
Also during EA last year, 26 Questbridge students were offered admission.

I’m not a fan of any sort of preference given to legacies–I think it’s a fundamentally unfair concept–but clearly those who have grown up knowing and loving Dartmouth might tend to apply early and may be well off enough that they don’t have to worry about comparing financial packages at different colleges. And as a generalization, many legacies are going to have excellent stats, given well-educated parents and growing up with a lot of advantages that some other applicants might not have, and their status could definitely be that tie-breaker that gets them accepted over other qualified applicants. But in terms of a certain percentage of the class actually being set aside during EA, I believe that’s for recruited athletes.

This quote is from an article from several years ago and is from a former Dartmouth adcom, but from my limited knowledge of the process, it rings true:
“Legacies do get a bump. We’re taught to be sensitive of if their father or mother went to Dartmouth. Legacies are admitted at twice the rate of other students—though in part because they tend to be strong academically. Lots of people complain, but I found that people who were legacies were strong academically.”

(Good luck to your daughter!)