<p>Hey I am trying to decide whether to apply early to Dartmouth or Middlebury. The schools seem relatively similar: Middlebury has this really cool vibe to it that I remember from visiting, I got a great vibe when I visited Dartmouth too. I really am looking for a fun-loving, outdoorsy school with interesting students who don't take themselves too seriously. I worry if Dartmouth is so academically-centered to the point where not much else happens. and with Middlebury I worry it would feel a bit too small. What are your thoughts?</p>
<p>post stats.</p>
<p>Dartmouth:
Acceptance rate: 13%
Early decision acceptance rate: 35%
Top 10% of high school class: 91.2%
SAT score (25/75 percentile) 2010-2310
ACT score (25/75 percentile) 29-34</p>
<p>Middlebury:
20.6% acceptance rate
_____25th - 50th - 75th Percentile
GPA: 3.79 - 3.87 - 3.99
SAT I: 2109 - 2241 - 2280</p>
<p>Ok, now we need your stats. ;)</p>
<p>Oh! haha…</p>
<p>GPA: 3.53
SAT 1: 2100
Top 20% of class (not officially reported)
My essays are illuminating and establish an academic niche. I started a nonprofit and rode my bike across america</p>
<p>As you can see, either school is a sizable reach. But I’d like to give it a shot</p>
<p>With all honesty I think both are High Reaches, with Dartmouth almost a super reach. Might be better to have a closer target school like Colgate to best use the ED. Just a thought.</p>
<p>I spent a week at Dartmouth for a med camp, and had the opportunity to talk with a few sophomores. One of them, an economics major, told me that 40% of his Dartmouth life revolved around academics, with the other 60% revolving around his ECs and social life. From what I’ve gathered, it actually seems as though the academic rigor at Middlebury is more intense than at Dartmouth. Obviously workload and rigor varies among majors, but this is just a generalization based on what I’ve heard and read. Does anyone know if Dartmouth practices any (slight) grade inflation?</p>
<p>Anyways, I definitely don’t think Dartmouth is “so academically-centered to the point where not much else happens.” It’s known for its Greek life. I mean, I was invited to a party by a stoned girl in a zebra dress and purple boa. They certainly know how to have fun. Not to say Middkids don’t, but I’ve heard more about the party scene at Dartmouth than at Midd.</p>
<p>As for size, it’s a difference of about 1700 undergrads. According to USNWR, Dartmouth has 4,196 undergrads and Midd has 2,482 undergrads. The extra size of Dartmouth may be nice if you don’t want such a small school. Apparently the rumor mill sucks at Midd because of the small size.</p>
<p>I obviously don’t know you well, but you seem like a Dartmouth type to me. Take my judgment with a grain of salt, though, considering I’ve based it entirely on the info I’ve gathered from one post. As for what Slipper1234 said, I completely disagree. Early Decision is for your first choice. First choices are most often reaches. Don’t apply to a target school ED if it’s not your first choice. If you get accepted to a target ED, you would have to attend, and you would kick yourself for not even APPLYING to Dartmouth or Midd. Yeah, your chances of getting into Colgate ED may be greater than those of getting into Dartmouth/Midd ED, but really, if it’s not your first choice, don’t apply ED.</p>
<p>I’m currently trying to decide my first choice: Dartmouth, Middlebury, or Vassar.</p>
<p>You’re great, Murgatron! I definitely agree that first choice is first choice…if you’re going to take a stab at it, you might as well do it right. (I also happened to visit Colgate in the spring and dislike it to a point where I took it off my list)…I could imagine Dartmouth has a slight slant in grading, because it’s these top-tier liberal arts schools like Midd, Amherst, Williams, etc that are trying to stay at the top/continually better themselves, and its the Ivys that will always be considered at the top and don’t have to actualize that fact as rigorously in terms of workload…</p>
<p>Slipper1234 I def appreciate your pragmatic approach because yes, they’re both very high reaches, even coming from a competitive school. On paper I am in the bottom quartile in most sections of accepted students. But honestly even if I get rejected by D-mouth, I’ll be able to live with my decision more than if I got accepted to my 3rd or 4th slightly-less-selective choice early. Strategic? No. But you never know…</p>
<p>Vassar? Vassar is so cool. My friend goes there and I visited her a couple months ago. The student body vibe is pretty liberal/artistic, everyone there is really fun and integrated. Good luck…</p>
<p>And it’s good to hear not just that the party scene is fun, but that the student body seems really involved, fun-loving, and busy. My concern was getting stuck in a work-party cycle.</p>
<p>Yeah sorry I was just playing objective odds. I think Dartmouth is a great fit - its a great social life. Academics are part of it, but Dartmouth students definitely know how to have a really good time - in a little more like an 80s movie sort of way. The word ridiculous comes to mind, people just have such a fun time. </p>
<p>Vassar is great. I definitely enjoyed my times there.</p>
<p>Considering legacies, URM, and recruited athletes make up over 30% of the student body, Dartmouth is not too likely if you are not in one of the above groups. Have you considered re-taking the SAT; you still have time.</p>
<p>Murgatron-I don’t know how well the econ major you talked with is doing at Dartmouth. But it seems like most people from Dartmouth who has made it far (at least ones at Stanford Law and top law and finance firms) spent the majority of their time when at Dartmouth bettering their analytical reasoning skills. Competition is intense in premed and econ classes.</p>
<p>As for the appearance of a relatively light workload at Dartmouth (I have also heard Harvard described this way), is it possible that their students are just incredibly bright and can efficiently handle all the required work?</p>
<p>My son goes to a top high school (previously #1 in the US, if you believe those silly rankings). He is a valedictorian candidate, yet he really doesn’t appear to work all that hard for those grades. He obviously studies enough, yet still has ample time for varsity sports, TV, Xbox, Facebook, etc. You hear all the time about the Superkids at the Ivies, with top high school records and tons of ECs. They’re obviously smart and efficient enough to excel in school while enjoying life outside the classroom.</p>
<p>Chardo - Your reasoning ignores an important distinction. College is very different from high school. Getting into a top college isn’t hard for smart students. However, in college, to the brightest students, there are no limits and no guarantees in career & life. Some people can accomplish in 10 years what some can’t do in 50 years, and accomplish in 30 years that some can never accomplish. The smartest students wouldn’t think like this: my chances of getting into Yale Law is decent if I just get almost all A’s, which would take up 30% of my time, so that’s what I’ll just do; I will just spend the other 70% chilling, pursuing my hobbies, and getting drunk. Those student think more like this: since I can probably get almost all A’s if I spend 30% of my time on coursework, so I’ll spend another 40% studying for the GMAT gunning for a perfect score (though I would accept a score deep in the 99th percentile, too) to impress my interviewers for those DE Shaw, Bain Cap, and Goldman internships so I can make 18k during the summer before I start at HBS right out of undergrad; and you bet I that will be spending another 5% of my time buffing up my analytical skills, networking, and making Bloomberg an extension of my brain, etc.
I’m sure a lot of the smartest undergrads at HYP, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, etc. want to be making over $1mil/year by the time they reach 35, and even for those smartest undergrads who are running out of time (they only have 13 years to make that happen), it means so much to do and so little time.</p>
<p>Top students at Dartmouth definitely don’t think getting straight A’s is close to enough. I once heard this story about how a few years ago at Dartmouth, a top econ major who has interned at Goldman, a math genius who won the math olympiad in high school, a CS major who has secured admission into Harvard Med, and some others were prepping 70+ hours/week in addition to classes for interview for a DE Shaw job that offered around $400,000 for the 1st year out of college. I don’t know if this story was exaggerated or not (I’m a little skeptical about its accuracy), but I think it’s true.</p>
<p>It depends. Quite honestly I had a very different approach. I knew what GPA I needed to follow the career path I wanted, and the b-school level I was aiming for. I loved studying, but it wasn’t my life, at least not all the time. I pretty much did exactly as well as my goal (around a 3.6-3.7), and had an absolutely amazing college experience outside of the classroom as well. I honestly was happy enough getting a mix of A-'s, B+s, and As. My very good friend the otherhand drove to A’s 100% of the time and he was the type who needed to study to get a summa cum laude type of GPA. I think we’re now in very similar places overall and there’s no question I enjoyed myself much more. So looking back, would I have studied harder? Probably not. I did exactly as well as I wanted to.</p>
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<p>I’m very skeptical. That kind of base salary would probably only be offered to an extremely talented quant coming out of a PhD program, not an undergrad.</p>
<p>Since slipper actually works in the industry, though, I’m sure s/he could give more insight. (Would you mind doing so, slipper? I’d like to know if the story is true.)</p>
<p>Hey yea that seems like an inordinate sum of money. Around 200K all in the first year is usually the normal peak.</p>
<p>slipper-I agree with you. I’m sure that there are a lot of students at Dartmouth getting excellent grades (maybe not 4.0 or 3.9+) while spending over 30% of their time making the most of their college experience. Like you said, there are many students (including many of the extremely smart ones) who view their day mostly as an opportunity to push themselves to reason better than the day before and to know a little more about everything than the day before. What they end up achieving in life & career is another story. So to the OP, you can study as much or as little as you wish at Dartmouth or Middlebury depending on your abilities and goals. However, with a few exceptions (UChicago, Caltech, Cooper Union, etc.), the amount of time undergrads at various top colleges spend on studying probably don’t differ to any significant extent.</p>
<p>As the OP has a GPA of 3.53, which translates to an 88.25 average (assuming 4.0 unweighted scale), I agree with slipper1234: both schools are VERY high reaches.</p>
<p>OP: Your GPA hurts your chances and your SAT score is meh. Do you have any more extracurriculars other than the nonprofit and bike riding? Your lack of extracurriculars will also hurt your chances, but if your nonprofit organization is significant, then it could cover your GPA and extracurricular gap. Otherwise EDing to either school is a waste of an ED opportunity that you could be using on a low reach. Perhaps you can explain your nonprofit a little.</p>
<p>In response to the last 2 posts…and the wonderful slipper1234…your job is not to evaluate whether i qualify for these colleges. I’m applying to one of them early. a 2100 is not meh and i certainly do NOT have a lack of extracurriculars. obviously i talked about them in my application! and for the record, i did not even include one third of my information, extracurriculars, classes, teacher recs, ETC because the objective was to get advice about the colleges and what makes them each stand out, not to size me up as an applicant when…let’s see…nobody on this thread has ever worked in an admissions office.</p>