<p>Current Dartmouth students, please describe the social life and academics at D! What do you do on weekends? How is the workload?</p>
<p>Kimfuge,</p>
<p>If you goto the old post of the parents forum under Sybbie, some of us have written about our kids first few weeks at Dartmouth, friends, work load etc.</p>
<p>For social life, I refer you to <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=132%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=132</a></p>
<p>As for academics... since it's quarter system, 3 courses is a typical load. There is a lot of variety... and Dartmouth is very flexible, so getting out of "101" type classes is very easy. Classes are typically small (I have 2 classes of 15 students; my friend has a German class with only 4 kids) and profs are quite accessible, at least the ones I've encountered. I'm taking classes in Native American Studies, Religion and Math depts... and so far, I love the variety. I only have class 3 days a week, so Tuesday and Thursday (today), I have time to just chill, do some work and enjoy the autumn. Some people I know have hard schedules and classes they dislike, but you'll find that everywhere--a loathed prof, class or dept. Most classes are challenging but manageable. I do sports everyday, orchestra and other clubs and I still have time to do all my reading/writing assigments.</p>
<p>thanks so much!</p>
<p>anyone else?</p>
<p>I want to be honest with you about the drinking scene: I would imagine it would be VERY uncomfortable for a non-drinker at Dartmouth, especially on big weekends like Homecoming and Winter Carnival, because I think the general expectation is that most people will drink. That said, there is no <em>direct</em> pressure. People don't mock each other (especially girls). There are dance parties at frats, and a lot of non-drinkers go to them (although I can't imagine wanting to go to one of those crowded things sober!) There is non-alcoholic programming, but honestly after freshman fall it's not very popular.</p>
<p>Social life centers around the fraternities, playing beer pong in the basement. Hard liquor is not as widespread, although if you know people you can get it, or get invited to the special events. I am in a sorority and while they are a wonderful experience, they don't generally hold that many open to the campus social events (with the exception of Sigma Delta). There are also a few co-ed houses, which generally offer non-alcoholic social events.</p>
<p>Drugs- virtually non-existent. That was my big fear, because while I enjoy drinking I am not comfortable around people who use drugs. Do not let this be a factor. They hardly exist at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Your best bet at Dartmouth is to join two activities and get very heavily involved. You make your closest friends that way. Not really so much in class, because people are mostly in their own world in class, or sitting with their close friends already.</p>
<p>If you have any questions about Dartmouth, please email me. I am an 06 and would be happy to talk to you.</p>
<p>Best of luck,
Amanda</p>
<p>This is kind of ridiculous, but...</p>
<p>Is the drinking solely related to beer? I'm not a hypocrite; I understand that if I go here, I'm gonna drink. Thing is, though, I hate beer. Hate it. I'm a wine cooler/margarita/hard lemonade type of girl. So, is the alcoholic beverage selection limited to beer, or are there other options present?</p>
<p>Thought: Hope no cops are trolling this site right now.</p>
<p>There are wine coolers/margaritas/jello shots etc. at special events at fraternities. However, my friends and I used to have our over 21 friends buy us bottles of Boones our freshman year. (Boones is a sort of flavored wine cooler, about the alcohol content of a beer.) We'd drink it in our room before we went out.</p>
<p>That said, the beer that the frats use to play pong at Dartmouth is Keystone Light, and while you will never love it, it is really easy-to-swallow beer. It's more like water.</p>
<p>Keystone Light is bearable but obviously not great. Sometimes frats will have a night with better beer (for instance, Zeta Psi sometimes has Pabst). Then of course there are always ****tail parties in frats and in people's dorms.</p>
<p>EDIT: Lol @ the word censor.</p>
<p>It's funny but whenever frats advertise "good" beer (i.e. AXA does Guiness sometimes) I am totally grossed out and wish they just had Keystone because it has less flavor. It's sad that at an Ivy League school I have cultivated an appreciation for cheap beer.</p>
<p>Tails are the way to go.</p>
<p>What is the workload like at Dartmouth? I'm sure it'd probably depend upon the classes being taken, but for certan Dartmouthers, what is your workload like (do you work all the time/ have some free time/ have a good bit of free time)?</p>
<p>My Daughter is taking a class CLST 14- Greek History and to say that there is a lot of work is an understatement. It is a small class of approximately 15 students which 5 are freshmen. There are essays and quizzes in every classes and a ton of reading every night. She found out that Christensen gives a lot of work in all his classes. However, she finds the class to be very stimulating and has learned a lot. They has a paper due on monday bases ib almost 800 pages of reading that the professor gave out, so has spent part of her thanksgiving break working. He holds classes druing his X-hours every week so they meet monday, tuesday, wednesday and friday.</p>
<p>She is up late a lot of nights and I have had calls at 3 a.m. requesting a wake-up call because she is finishing a paper.There are days that I really feel for her because she has so much work in this one class, however she is holding her own and doing well. I told her that this was quite an introduction to college life but I told her that she was able to get through this class so she will be fine. I think math is killing almost everyone she knows but she is holding her own. The work hard, play hard probably holds true. She is up late a ot of nights because there is a lot of work in Mtha, a lot of work in History. She is taking Bio with Dr. Witters who she absolutely loves. Each class is different, she has friends who are taking classes which she finds that she may breeze through but college is definitely not High school. I encourage her to have some balance to take time to hang out with her friends and take a break from things. I know that a lot depends on one's intended major. Next term she is balancig psych with chem becasue there are 5 hour labs s she chose a class where there would not be a lot of papers because of the lab work for chem and all of the reading and writing for english.</p>
<p>The work load is going to depend on what you are majoring in; if you are an engineering major it's not going to be easy. The Pre-med curriculum is the year of bio, chem o-chem and physics all with 5 hour labs -there's not getting around that. My daughter has friends who are chem majors, spanish majors, engineering majors , amth majors and everyone has their own talke of woe. No matter what your major there are going to be easy classes and hard classes, and I believe that you cannot be afraid of challenging yourself an if you are looking for an easy education which is GIGO then Dartmouth is NOT the place for you.</p>
<p>I am a history major. The workload is very heavy, but you need to keep in mind grade inflation.</p>
<p>The situation is that if you want to get all A's, you are going to have to work incredibly hard. That means seven nights a week, no going out, no questions asked. If you want to squeak by with a B minus or a C plus, you hardly have to do anything.</p>
<p>People dive into their freshman fall and work amazingly hard, but it tapers off. They realize after awhile that it's not necessary. To get a B plus or an A minus requires NOTICEABLY less work than an A. And a lot of people make that tradeoff.</p>
<p>Still, grade inflation is not AS notorious at Dartmouth as at, say, Harvard or Stanford.</p>
<p>Also I wouldn't recommend taking 4 classes until your sophomore year.</p>
<p>Congrats to having made it to the end of the quarter. Something like 3 more days then reading period and finals.</p>
<p>I when I dropped my Daughter off this morning at the Port Authority for her trip back to Hanover there seems to be a sense of relief that the quarter is over this week and excitement about classes for the next quarter. I had to laugh because most of you really missed being away from each other for 5 days (met a lot of new faces but everyone seems so friendly, I swear I think that you are pod people that you ar eso happy)</p>
<p>Some of the common conversations this morning was that it seems that very little homework got done over the break (my house included) so most people tryint to cathch the early bus were also trying to get back to finish HW tonight.</p>
<p>Hope you alll had a great thanksgiving break and all the best on finals</p>
<p>Oh God, Sybbie, when I was going back to Dartmouth from the Port Authority my freshman year, I got mugged! So scary... I think about it every time I'm there now.</p>
<p>Luckily I didn't have much money on me!</p>
<p>Well, it was crowed but everything was pretty orderly, no muggings (thank goodness) . The mom of one of her friends made sandwiches and snack for all of them for the bus, I sent up 2 large bols of lasagna and peach cobbler so that they could have dinner upon their return to Hanover. One of the guys she was talking to this morning said that he had taken Physics 3 and was finished with everything for that class.</p>
<p>She called to let me know she was "home" and is finishing up her paper for greek history. Back to the salt mines</p>
<p>Sybbie--it's funny you mentioned how everyone missed each other after being gone for only five days. It was so true! I live in California so I went to stay at a friend's house in New York over Thanksgiving, and even though we had fun at her house, we both missed Dartmouth so much! It'll be even harder to leave everyone for a month over winter break...
Anyway, to answer the OP, I'm extremely happy with both my classes and the social life, and I've been able to balance the two without much difficulty. I'm taking The Age of the Samurai for my freshman seminar (15 people), Spanish 9 (12 people) , and Film Studies 1 (50 or so people). The workload is definitely more than high school, but you adjust to it. I had a 12-page research paper due yesterday and I have a two-page spanish essay due tomorrow, but this week will actually be pretty easy because after tomorrow all I have to do is study for my film final.
As for the social scene...it's amazing. People give Dartmouth a bad rep and say all anyone does is drink, but that really doesn't give the social scene enough credit. On a typical Friday night my friends and I will go to a show of some kind at 8 (a capella, improv, a play, a movie, whatever), goof around in our dorm room for a while, maybe grab some food at Thayer, and then head to the frats at about midnight. Dance parties are really fun--especially themed dance parties. All the weird costume things in the back of your closet you aren't planning to bring--feather boas, weird hats, phony glasses with thick eyebrows--bring them. They are necessary. For those of you who come here next year, early 80s is awesome, and so is the disco inferno at Tabard. And make sure to dress up the weekend before Halloween because a.) it's fun and b.) some frats won't even let you in without a costume. I missed naked tails at AD (where the pledges serve bar naked) and I'm really sad, but I think it has been mentioned before that Dartmouth is very naked-friendly, so I'm sure there will be other nudity in the future to make up for it. Most of my friends do drink, but I definitely know non-drinkers who still go out to the frats and have fun. A football player who lives downstairs from me never drinks, and he still goes out to party with his teammates at GDX on the weekends. Also, drinking doesn't necessarily mean that you get drunk. That's totally your choice. And I think someone said they were worried about only drinking Keystone--it's not that hard to get on a few frat lists for *<strong><em>tail parties. They'll blitz you about pre-party *</em></strong>tails, which are usually served at 9:30. They do sometimes have lists for these, but they don't always check them. It depends on the night. Also, room *<strong><em>tail parties are not uncommon; my friend is throwing a "Swank Tunes" *</em></strong>tail party tomorrow, with margaritas and cosmopolitans.
Okay, some non-drinking activities: The week before Thanksgiving three of my friends spent hours cooking an elaborate meal for about 15 people in my dorm's basement, which was a blast. The weekend before break I went to a Dashboard Confessionals concert on campus with a bunch of my friends, which was absolutely amazing. This Saturday we're planning a girls vs. guys touch football game on the green--but my guy friends are being macho (aka stupid) about it, and it's going to be eight girls against four guys. They still think they're going to beat us. (No.) Soo many more random things like that, but this is already ridiculously long. Almost everybody is involved in some kind of activity--I write for the news section of the Dartmouth, my friend does backstage for shows, one of my roommates does theater and sang in a musical review in Lone Pine, the other roommate plays rugby. I've gone to speeches by Madeleine Albright, Art Spieglemen (famous cartoonist), and Alexander Payne (director of the movie "Sideways,") and friends of mine have also seen Howard Dean and Vanessa Kerry. Political groups organized trips for people to see Bush and Kerry on several occasions when they came to New Hampshire also (good thing we're a swing state.) Also, whoever comes here next year, make sure to go and see "Wired," the three 24 hour plays they perform once a term. (24 hour plays meaning they write them starting at 8 pm, cast them at 8 am the next morning, and perform them at 8 pm that night. Really good.)
Okay, this hopefully has given you a taste of what life here is like. I probably already told you way more than you wanted to know, but feel free to ask me anything.</p>
<p>That was definately an awesome, helpful post. Thanks so much! :-D</p>
<p>Wow. Awesome post, Kelsey!</p>
<p>(It's so Dartmouth (as an adjective) that the place is very nude-friendly despite being in New England).</p>