<p>I dont drink nor do i plan to join a frat...would i still be able to "fit" in dartmouth?</p>
<p>do you like the outdoors? skiing/hiking etc are popular things to do at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>If you don’t like frats or the outdoors… you wouldn’t fit in with the majority. You could still, however, find a good group of friends… but in that case, why would you want to go to Dartmouth? Maybe Williams/Amherst are better fits? Something to think about</p>
<p>how dominant is the drinking scene?</p>
<p>People drink a bit at Dartmouth, but I, myself, am not a drinker at all and I never felt pressured to drink. Like flyingllama said you will still find a good group of friends which I did and some of them do drink but you do what you want to do out here don’t worry about fitting in and what not. There are other things for you to do besides drinking…join a club and that alone will take up a lot of your time :D</p>
<p>Hope this helps,
~Questionable28</p>
<p>Tons of stuff to do here. Although, don’t apply if you have a specific aversion to the color green. Yeah…don’t think those people would really fit in well here…</p>
<p>The drinking scene and frats are huge at Dartmouth and it seems clear to me the happiest kids there participate in it. It’s not mandatory to get bombed, but ‘going out’ means going to the frats and that’s what the social mainstream do.</p>
<p>I know all of this, BTW, from a lot of summer eavesdropping involving rising sophomores.</p>
<p>Green’s my favorite color! I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t part of the reason I’m applying to Dartmouth… lol</p>
<p>You know… Real Ivy is green :)</p>
<p>I have to respectfully disagree with Hmom that “it seems clear the happiest kids (at Dartmouth) participate in” the frat scene. No doubt your son loves the school and the social life he’s drawn to (which is wonderful!), but Dartmouth appeals ** just as much** to other types of people, too.</p>
<p>My son, a rising senior, never joined a frat and tells me he rarely visited them after freshmen year. Instead he’s found a great -and varied- group of friends. They go out to dinner, have parties, enjoy concerts, movies and lectures. This spring and summer he’s visited Dartmouth friends who’ve already graduated in Boston (twice) and NYC. Contrary to the common perception of Dartmouth students, my son plans to go into academics and has had absolutely unbelievable opportunities working directly with professors over several terms. Every time we see him, we’re delighted, but not only by how happy he is. More than that he’s content, confident, and mature. Quite a change from the high school boy we dropped off at McLaughlin three years ago! </p>
<p>I guess my point is, there’s lots more to Dartmouth than the “raging” frat parties. The school does a great job of accommodating differing interests and personalities…And what makes Dartmouth so amazing is that most of these kids, no matter what their choices, ALL end up “bleeding green.”</p>
<p>^^ Here, here. </p>
<p>I wish the reputation of Dartmouth as a bunch of beer-drinking, hard-partying frat boys would just go away. It’s so not true.</p>
<p>My son’s at Dartmouth – and yes, he’s in a frat – but he’s busting his butt to do a five-year engineering program in four years. He really doesn’t have too much time to party.</p>
<p>And his frat brothers are all very very serious about their academics.</p>
<p>^^ Here here again, …with a qualifier. I think drinking is a a bigger deal for a number of students than I once wanted to believe - and yet so completely NOT the defining quality of 4 years at Dartmouth. Shazz12 really described my experience - witnessing the incredible opportunities, the maturity and gowrth in leadership ability, and the true, sustained happiness - I can’t say enough about how positive the experience was. I think students of all types basically respect and support each each other, and appreciate what they have at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>I know my kids (I also have a '12) drink at Dartmouth, but I guess I never expected otherwise, so it really doesn’t bother me. On the other hand, I don’t think they’re “booting and rallying” three times a week either! (At least I hope not).</p>
<p>I did not mean to suggest that all Dartmouth students do socially is drink. Apologies if my words were not well chosen.</p>
<p>I did witness a pretty spirited debate among '12’s, one of whom really did not enjoy his freshmen year. His position was that everyone on his freshmen floor was partying at frats several nights each week and he was disgusted by their drunken behavior.</p>
<p>The position of the several others, both male and female, was that he should have understood that this was at the center of Dartmouth’s social life. They said that many went to parties and did not get silly drunk, but that frat life is huge in the mainstream at Dartmouth and questioned why he chose the college as this was very well known.</p>
<p>I’ve know a few other kids over the years who have not enjoyed Dartmouth. Their reason was always a social life they were not comfortable with. There have been threads on this board with current Dartmouth students that very much echoed what I heard. Anyone remember the poster with blue in his/her name that was looking to transfer?</p>
<p>Hopefully some students will weigh in. IMO it’s important for kids to really understand from the students’ perspective what the mainstream culture is. We as parents are not there and I know they are not sharing all with us.</p>
<p>Found this thread which is pretty balanced:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/dartmouth-college/640930-dartmouth-intellectual.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/dartmouth-college/640930-dartmouth-intellectual.html</a></p>