Dartmouth Dual-Degree Engineering with LAC

[merc81]

Here is an extensive comment on this topic from a CC contributor from a few years ago (Hamilton rigor, post #13):

My son is a senior at Hamilton and doing the 2-1-1-1 combined engineering with Dartmouth. Originally he thought he wanted to pursue the Columbia 3-2 and major in Mechanical engineering. For Dartmouth you apply in your Sophomore year and for Columbia you apply in your Junior year. Columbia used to be guaranteed admission provided you meet some very specific course and grade requirements and once admitted for a specific major you were locked in. You could not change it. I am really glad my son decided to pursue the Dartmouth plan. It was definitely a better fit for him for a variety of reasons. Once he started at Dartmouth he realized that he liked Electrical Engineering , more than Mechanical and was able to pursue that without any issues. Also, the Dartmouth curriculum is much more project oriented and has more of an entrepreneurial focus which is what he wanted. He felt that his Hamilton education prepared him extremely well for Dartmouth. He was studying with students from Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Vassar, Colby and he felt he often took more physics courses at Hamilton and had more course requirements waived at Dartmouth than students from these other extremely selective LACs. One other thing that was a better fit for him was the format at Dartmouth. When most of his Hamilton friends were studying abroad, he was at Dartmouth. He is now back at Hamilton for his senior senior, and will graduate with his friends in May. Also, Dartmouth is growing their engineering program and is likely to admit more students in the coming years. They also have preferential/guaranteed acceptance for their MS, MEM, ME and Phd programs for current students who maintain a certain GPA or higher. For him, the Dartmouth plan was a much better fit than the 3-2 at Columbia.