<p>Yale has law and Harvard has medicine.</p>
<p>It seems to me that the majority of the top engineering undergrads at Dartmouth get into engineering at MIT, etc., but end up taking offers in consulting and finance; a few friends I know at Thayer consider going to grad school in engineering at MIT, etc. their plan B.</p>
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<p>It seems to me that the majority of the top students at my high school get into engineering at Dartmouth, etc., but end up taking offers at MIT/Stanford/Princeton; a few friends I know at my high school consider going to undergrad in engineering at Dartmouth, etc. their plan D.</p>
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<p>Congratulations?</p>
<p>All that Spring was trying to say was that Thayer will give you such great job opportunities out of undergrad that many will consider grad school at even the most prestigious places plan B.</p>
<p>MIT, Stanford, and Princeton will give their undergrads similar opportunities. I was accepted to two of those institutions, but chose Dartmouth - admittedly not for engineering - because I thought the overall experience would be better. For the fields I’m interested in, finance and medicine, there’s a negligible - or at worst, a very small - difference in recruiting and opportunities between Dartmouth and HYPSM.</p>
<p>“It seems to me that the majority of the top students at my high school get into engineering at Dartmouth, etc., but end up taking offers at MIT/Stanford/Princeton; a few friends I know at my high school consider going to undergrad in engineering at Dartmouth, etc. their plan D.”</p>
<p>Maybe the ones end up studying engineering at MIT/Stanford/Princeton would end up opting for hedge funds, consulting, etc., when they graduate given that they get high GPA’s. I was just pointing out my observation. If you go to any interview meeting for investment banks, consulting firms, etc., you will find many high achieving engineering majors.</p>
<p>Based on my observations, of the top students at Dartmouth, only the people who absolutely want to dedicate their careers to the field of their major (whether it’s history, physics, math, biology, linguistics, etc.) would pursue MA and PhD in those area. If not, those top students opt for medicine, business, and law.</p>
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<p>Congratulations?</p>
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<p>Some do; others don’t. Did I say anything different or even bring up what engineering majors do or don’t do?</p>
<p>In my awkward and clumsy attempt to match your unmatched arrogance (such as calling MIT grad school “Plan B”) word for word, I said that “the top students at my high school get into engineering at Dartmouth” instead of Dartmouth in general, which is what I meant. Oh well.</p>
<p>Oh, and by “match,” I mean…mock.</p>
<p>objobs - are you a high school student? You definitely sound like one. You sound like you have no idea on how students (especially top engineering majors) at top colleges think about careers and the paths they prefer. Grad school at MIT is plan B for a lot of top engineering undergrads.</p>
<p>As to “Some do; others don’t.” Of the top engineering undergrads, most prefer business, few who really want to be engineers would consider engineering grad school as plan A. Most of the top engineering undergrads who end up taking offers from top engineering grad schools are international students who can’t break into finance.</p>
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<p>Actually, I am a recent high school grad who will be matriculating at a university in the fall.</p>
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<p>You sound condescending.</p>
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<p>If “grad school at MIT is plan B for a lot of top engineering undergrads,” then undergraduate school at Dartmouth is plan D for a lot of top high school students.</p>
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<p>Business and grad school are not mutually exclusive. Many people who run hedge funds, private equity and venture capital firms have PhDs and/or MBAs from Harvard/Stanford/MIT et al. Almost all of the quants who write the algorithms that the traders use have PhDs in math/physics/engineering, etc.</p>
<p>“If “grad school at MIT is plan B for a lot of top engineering undergrads,” then undergraduate school at Dartmouth is plan D for a lot of top high school students.” I totally agree. Like all schools with the exception of Harvard and Stanford, Dartmouth isn’t the plan A for the majority of its matriculating students; it may be plan D for a lot of students. However, many of those students end up loving the school and wouldn’t transfer out to Harvard/Stanford even if they could.</p>
<p>“You sound condescending.” The truth doesn’t always sound sweet.</p>
<p>“Business and grad school are not mutually exclusive. Many people who run hedge funds, private equity and venture capital firms have PhDs and/or MBAs from Harvard/Stanford/MIT et al. Almost all of the quants who write the algorithms that the traders use have PhDs in math/physics/engineering, etc.” When have I ever said business and grad school is mutually exclusive? I said a lot of top engineering undergrads prefer going straight into business over going to engineering grad school. In fact, a lot of positions in S&T prefer people with math, science, and engineering backgrounds. JDs frequently join M&A teams. However, many top engineering undergrads prefer going straight into business after undergrad and then pursue a MBA instead of going to engineering grad school at MIT and pursue careers in engineering. Of the top engineering undergrads I know, more ended up at Sloan than at engineering at MIT.</p>
<p>To answer the original question by the OP, Dartmouth and a lot of other liberal arts programs don’t usually have disguished undergraduate majors.</p>
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<p>Most people wouldn’t transfer out of anywhere once they’ve settled. (Here I intend “settled” to have a double meaning.) It’s inertia as much as “love.”</p>
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<p>Your “truth” isn’t THE truth.</p>
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<p>[Selection</a> bias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias]Selection”>Selection bias - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>You only think this because Dartmouth is more pre-professional (anti-intellectual) than many of its peer institutions:</p>
<p>[nsf.gov</a> - SRS Baccalaureate Origins of S&E Doctorate Recipients - US National Science Foundation (NSF)](<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/]nsf.gov”>Archive Goodbye | NCSES | NSF)</p>
<p>If you haven’t noticed, we are talking about Dartmouth here, since we are on the Dartmouth page. Nah, I don’t need to remind you, since you apparently knows the precise meaning of everything that goes on in the world.</p>
<p>“Your “truth” isn’t THE truth.” Meaning yours is? Who knows Dartmouth better, you or me? I, and most people I know, always thought that the first year in college is the year that most drastically change a person’s perspectives on career options. Today, I finally met a know-it-all who haven’t yet started college yet thinks he/she knows everything about the academic and career aspirations of college students. How can I ever claim to know career aspirations of Dartmouth students better than you?</p>
<p>Just don’t generalize and equate the academic vs. career aspirations of (engineering) students at Dartmouth to those of (engineering) students at other schools, which you were clearly trying to do:</p>
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<p>Of course I wasn’t. When I refer to top engineering undergrads at Dartmouth, I say most of them opt for finance. In the post above, I used “maybe” and didn’t use “most” when refering to ones at other schools. The last statement was obviously refering to Dartmouth undergrads.</p>
<p>We obviously come from different worlds. I from a pre-professional one, and you from an intellectual one. I’m contributing my pre-professional perspectives in the hope that they offers value for the OP and people on this board, which is you may matriculate at Dartmouth thinking you would pursue one set of career paths and end up pursuing a totally different set of paths. I hope you are mature enough to realize the value of diverse perspectives instead of fussing over any ambiguity in what I wrote.</p>