<p>Posted in Yale and Dartmouth forums</p>
<p>My son, who is at Yale, didn’t apply to Dartmouth because of its location. Some people choose Dartmouth because of its location.</p>
<p>I am going to Yale, but I live in Hanover and have taken a couple classes at Dartmouth. From what I have seen, the professors are great and talented. There seem to be more opportunities at Yale and it is in a better location. There is not much to do around Dartmouth, as Hanover is such a small town, so I guess most of the nightlife centers around the parties on Frat Row. I can answer any specific questions you have about the Hanover area.</p>
<p>They’re both great universities with excellent faculty and strong students, but they have a very different feel related to their history and location. Both play a dominant role in their respective towns, but that’s even more true of Dartmouth. Even though Dartmouth is a smaller school than Yale, it’s huge in relation to a very small town location – you can pretty much see downtown Hanover in a five-minute walk. It’s a couple-hour bus ride to Boston, the nearest major airport. Dartmouth has a very outdoorsy orientation (a great place for skiers, hikers, etc.), and a very strong fraternity system. (Yale has fraternities, but they’re not nearly as central to the social scene.) The undergraduate college plays a more dominant role at Dartmouth than at Yale, which has a larger graduate scene. Yale is in a much more urban location, which has pluses and minuses, and it’s midway between New York and Boston. Yale is famed for its college scene, and Dartmouth for the distinctive D Plan. </p>
<p>In both schools, most of the action is on campus rather than off, and students at both tend to love their school, albeit for somewhat different reasons. Winter weather can be challenging at both places, but Yale tends a little more toward damp and dismal, whereas Dartmouth more toward frigid and snowy. </p>
<p>Best way to choose is to spend some time in each place. Most people will have pretty distinct reactions to each, though they may come to different conclusions about which they like better.</p>
<p>I actually ended up making this choice, and in favor of Yale. For me, the granola side of Dartmouth couldn’t really outweigh what I perceived as the downside of the greek scene there. While Dartmouth was nice with its small classes, a look through the Yale OCI reveals this too exist in New Haven as well. Yale had a more intellectual atmosphere than Dartmouth, and seemed to be stronger in the areas I’m interested in. Yale also was better suited to my extracurricular tastes.</p>
<p>I still love Dartmouth, and think that it would be a fantastic place to go to school; but ultimately, I found myself a better fit at Yale.</p>