<p>I just had a few questions about Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Are there students there really competitive or laid-back or somewhere in between?</p>
<p>Is the courseload manageable and how does it compare to high school?</p>
<p>Its laid back, people are ridiculously friendly and are not cutthroat at all. Dartmouth isn't the easiest Ivy, but by no means is it a pressure cooker.</p>
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<li>im not the type of student that is automatically brilliant and just gets things easily - i have had to work pretty hard to do well in high school ap classes. but i managed to be #1 out of 500 in my class so i guess that counts for something. i was wondering if anyone could elaborate on dartmouth's academic rigor - is it doable for a non-genius student - how hard is it to get a's? do the professors make it hard and challenging or is it very doable to get a's if one tries and works for it. Also - is there a lot of homework, studying, or tests, or is there generally lots of room for free time?</li>
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<p>Don't let that whole "three classes at a time" thing fool you. You will work at Dartmouth. You do the exact same amount of work here as your friends do at semester schools, but you do it in 10 weeks. That means every two weeks are mid-terms and papers are always coming up. That being said, I wouldn't say the work is any harder than I would have imagined from an Ivy. It just comes at you really fast. Getting sick or having to miss class due to an activity can be killer.</p>
<p>It's not a bad transition at all from high school. Be prepared to work hard and put in hours for your classes; but likewise, if you can do that, be prepared also get good grades as rewards for your work. There will naturally be occasional periods when all three classes converge with assignments at once and you go through a week that sucks -- like in high school -- but otherwise, I would not say it's truly different from high school.</p>
<p>I've not yet had a professor that grades on a curve, one explicitly pointing out that "your grade should not depend on the grade of your classmates." There's no cutthroat competition at all; I can't see any advantage in your classmates doing worse than you.</p>
<p>Well it seems that 40 percent of the incoming class is like you (first in their class!) so I assume it will be pretty tough!</p>
<p>After two terms here, I've found classes to be more challenging than expected, but students to be totally laid-back. Though there are some classes graded on a curve, I believe they're largely relegated to the large science lecture courses, and even there you'll find plenty of collaboration between students. I think it's more of a sense of competing against yourself--my science courses last term took me by surprise, but I like to think I've learned from my mistakes...</p>
<p>...and yes, I was a HS valedictorian too...</p>
<p>well that's good to know - i just can't help stressin out right now at the end of four years when i think about another four years of even harder work - but hopefully it's just in my head and i can handle the quickened pace</p>