I’m a high school junior who will be appyling to college in the fall.
My dilemna is:
I’m trying to decide which school to ED at: Williams or Dartmouth. I love both school’s campuses, and I like them both academically.
However, I have a significant “hook” at Williams which will give me a great chance at getting in ED (think recruited athlete, donor/legacy, etc). At Dartmouth, I have no “hook” whatsoever and feel my chance at getting in ED would be low and due to randomness (I have the right stats, ECs, essays, etc, but so do many rejects).
The issue is, although I’m sure I’d have a fine time at Williams, I feel like I’d fit in better and have much more fun at Dartmouth than I would at Williams. This is primarily due to what I have read about the schools online: Dartmouth having more of a party culture, frats, D1, a little larger, and a workload on the lighter side for a top college.
Is this true? Would it be worth taking a shot at Dartmouth ED?
workload is not on the “lighter” side at D. It’s on the quarter system, but those quarters are only ~9 weeks long, so things move very quickly. (The joke about quarter systems is that you don’t have time to catch a cold.)
My advice would be to take a gap year after high school and then apply to college when you’re more interested in an education than in partying, less concerned about the work load, and have a better idea of why you want to go to college and what you want to get out of it.
There is no reason you can’t have a healthy social life which includes parties AND get a great education. For someone to say otherwise is simply being judgmental. Different strokes for different folks. Some students party, some don’t. There is nothing wrong with being social all throughout life including during college. Fraternities in this day and age are about much more than parties anyway.
Now that we have that out of the way - follow your heart and ED at Dartmouth. I agree with you - I’d choose Dartmouth over Williams all day long.
Dartmouth Collegeis on a trimester / quarter system. But the academic schedule is not as intense as at some other quarter system schools as Dartmouth students typically take 3 courses per tern rather than 5 at most quarter system schools.
Williams College has slightly over 2,000 full time undergraduate students, while Dartmouth College has roughly 4.400 undergraduate students.
If you made a list of schools most like Dartmouth that are not in the Ivy League that are most like Dartmouth, Williams would be at the top of the list, so there’s little to differentiate between the two other than size and the larger graduate school at Dartmouth.
Both are distinguished by their low student:faculty ratio and their promotion of mentor ship relationships between faculty and students. This is probably even greater at Williams than Dartmouth, culminating in their British style tutorials with only 2 students and one professor. The other prominent difference is between Dartmouth’s quarter system and Williams’ January semester in which they offer very unique courses.
I don’t think the issue is where the work load is lighter but where the classes are so engaging that the work outside class is more fun and you’re more motivated to tackle it. In this respect, I’m guessing that Williams has Dartmouth beat.
Thanks for the advice! I was actually considering taking a gap year after high school, but I think I’d want to decide to do that or not once I’ve got my admissions results back.
It’s not that I’m not interested in the education at these schools- W and D being my top two choices is largely due to their academics- I just want to make sure I don’t feel bored/isolated on the weekends.
Thank you! Do you have any suggestions for safety/match schools that are more similar to Dartmouth? I was thinking about Trinity, Conn, Hamilton, Colgate
Hardest classes that I could take each year (all honors/ap), plus, next autumn I’ll be taking multiple classes at a T20
My main ECs:
MUN President, Work a pretty interesting and unique part-time job for the past 3 years,
NHS, founded a club, soccer, peer-tutor, founded two NGOs within my community
With these stats and ECs, do you think I have a decent chance at Dartmouth ED?
Thanks for taking the suggestion in the spirit in which it was intended. I wish I had taken a gap year when I was your age. I wasn’t ready when I went and would have gotten more out of college if I’d waited a year. In Europe, gap years are not only common; they’re expected. Years ago, the then president of Cornell recommended that every kid take a gap year. We rush things too much in this culture.
I’m linking an article, “Schools Similar to Dartmouth.” See the article for her explanation, but to save the suspense, here’s her list of match/safety schools:
Kenyon
Bowdoin
Middlebury
Bucknell
Williams
Vanderbilt
Colby
Carleton
This is a decent list of Dartmouth adjacent schools, but based on acceptance rates Bowdoin, Williams, Vanderbilt and Colby are reaches for all applicants. Middlebury, Bucknell, Kenyon, Carleton would be matches. There is no safety on this list.
Is this true ? Do students at most quarter system schools take 15 courses per academic year (5 per trimester)? That would surprise me. I am a Dartmouth alum but thus have no other personal college experience to compare to, so I can’t say whether the workload was heavier or lighter that that at other top schools . I recall working long and hard, being challenged, and having time for friends and fun.
Of potential overlap schools, I’d say Colgate would offer you the greatest similarity to Dartmouth, followed by NESCACs such as Colby, Bowdoin, Hamilton, Amherst, Williams and Middlebury. An urban NESCAC, Trinity, resembles Dartmouth socially. St. Lawrence and Whitman resemble Dartmouth with respect to setting. UVA and URichmond offer some of the general characteristics of Dartmouth. Academically, Carleton compares to most of these schools as well.
On the surface it may appear that Dartmouth is not an intense as other colleges (only 35 courses to graduate in contrast to 45), but that is not the case.
With the D-Plan, classes are compacted. What a typical quarter college will teach over three quarters, i.e., all year, Dartmouth compacts into two. Take the premed prerequisites as an example. Gen Chem and Organic Chem at Northwestern (quarter) or Williams for that matter, is taught oner the full year (3 quarters or 2 semesters, respectively). Dartmouth covers that one year material in two quarters, or ~18 weeks, which is not much longer than one semester at Williams; i.e., nearly twice as fast. So, “intensity” is in the eye of the beholder.
Small nit: a typical quarter school will require 4 courses per qtr to graduate on time, not 5. (typo?)