Is Dartmouth is a sub-standard school?

Student Lounge International Students
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<p>incidentally lse admissions were something of a joke as well. I wish i could show you the 'admission results' page from my yearbook.</p>

<p>Whereas for Imperial, I guess you are really kidding since it is about the same difficulty as Cornell. In fact, a friend of mine would be reading engineering at Cornell as he was rejected by Imperial. I don't know whether you are lying that 38/40 got offers, but since only 3 are going, I guess the take up rate for offers at your region is low. Imperial would calculate the statistic and figure that they need to give out more offers to attract students from your region.</p>

<p>hmmm...i dont think so. </p>

<p>i) i really doubt if english colleges care about geographic diversity as much as american colleges, since english colleges take a much less holistic approach to admissions than american colleges.
ii) Imperials PRETTY well known in pakistan, another colonial country, so quite a few people take up the offers
ii) Dartmouth only admitted three pakistanis this year, none last year. I'm the only one who's going there as far as i know. To top this off, there are (again as far as i know) only three pakis currently attending dartmouth. And dartmouth actually does care about diversity quite a bit. So it seems a little strange if imperial were to accept 40+ people just for the sake of geographic diversity.</p>

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When did i say that it was easy to get into? I said its as hard to get into as a lower ivy. Thats VERY hard as it stands. But, while you can OBVIOUSLY compare their brand-value and prestige, you cannot compare the selectivities of HYPSM to oxbridge, if for no other reason than that they look for completely different things. HYPSM attract more internationals because they dish out money in the form of aid. Oxbridge doesn't. This automatically means that only the richest 30 percent of the most deserving applicants can afford oxbridge. In contrast, ANYONE who gets into harvard, princeton, mit, yale can afford it. This means the rich kids have to compete with the poorer ones at top american colleges. They don't at oxbridge.

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Ah, that makes things clearer. Let's see: if a lower admit rate means higher selectivity, you're right. But you know just as me that it doesn't. Oxbridge generally has more qualified applicants (while many "ok" student apply to HYPS). And so on and so forth, I don't want to delve into this.
You have a point concerning money, though, and they'll have to change this (and they do). However, for Europeans it's the other way round. I rejected both Princeton and Berkeley because Cambridge was (1) better for my program (computer science), and (2) cheaper.</p>

<p>BTW, I don't think Dartmouth is a crap school and I don't agree with spencer in this point.</p>

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<p>A lower acceptance rate does not equal greater selectivity. If that was the case I would've said 'Dartmouth (at 15 percent) is twice as selective as cambridge'. its not. And greater selectivity does not equal to a better school. </p>

<p>I ADORE cambridge, but theres no way on earth i could ever afford it, since it doesnt give out aid. The result? I didnt apply there. Oxbridge (and even this is vague, since some programs are MUCH more difficult to get into than others). I don't know if oxbridge has more qualified applicants. I think a lot of people apply to oxbridge just because its oxbridge (certainly a lot people from my school did), while i'd imagine that would tend to happen less at LAC's like dartmouth (despite the ivy league label). Furthermore, a lot of people simply don't get visas to go for the all important oxbridge interview. This should, once again, deflate the acceptance rate. </p>

<p>Congrats on cambridge btw. A couple of my friends went there for their interviews. They said it was amazing.</p>

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<p>"I rejected both Princeton and Berkeley because Cambridge was (1) better for my program (computer science), and (2) cheaper." - Cambridge better than Berkeley for Computer Science .. I am sorry sir , NO effing way!!!</p>

<p>@Big Bro and Gang: Spencer is just doing it to get a reaction out of you , stop feeding the troll and be done with it. Opinions are opinions , you can fight as long as you feel like but its getting anyone nowhere. So enough with Dartmouth/Imperial bashing , move on !!!</p>

<p>@ammar: Being from India , I am still confounded by the ease of acceptances in Imperial for you guys, from a City like Delhi(one of the largest sets of affluent populations) usually 10 people make it cuz their offers are ridiculously high. Then again we dont follow A levels and getting 90's in English is dependent on luck rather than anything else. Oh ya and Imperial has a pretty lame reputation in India, but Dartmouth is still lamer.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Ah, that makes things clearer. Let's see: if a lower admit rate means higher selectivity, you're right. But you know just as me that it doesn't. Oxbridge generally has more qualified applicants (while many "ok" student apply to HYPS). And so on and so forth, I don't want to delve into this.

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<p>That's actually quite debatable. The simplest observation is that American students have different preferences from British students. You wouldn't find many people here applying to Oxbridge, and vice-versa.</p>

<p>But come on guys, we're getting off topic. Aren't we supposed to be insulting Dartmouth?</p>

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[quote]
@Big Bro and Gang: Spencer is just doing it to get a reaction out of you , stop feeding the troll and be done with it. Opinions are opinions , you can fight as long as you feel like but its getting anyone nowhere. So enough with Dartmouth/Imperial bashing , move on !!!

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<p>Even if spencer is a troll, I personally find it extremely gratifying to own him in this debate on just about every single aspect. He's not going to have much to say to my latest posts - I think I've pretty much crushed him. It's been fun, but it's also been a very lopsided battle.</p>

<p>I also highly doubt that a troll puts that much effort in his posts, despite how misled they are.</p>

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Oh ya and Imperial has a pretty lame reputation in India, but Dartmouth is still lamer.

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<p>I don't doubt this. ammars can tell you that India was a former British colony. Once again, this has to do with regional preferences. The fact still stands that Imperial has a pretty non-existent presence in America.</p>

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<p>@ammar: Being from India , I am still confounded by the ease of acceptances in Imperial for you guys, from a City like Delhi(one of the largest sets of affluent populations) usually 10 people make it cuz their offers are ridiculously high. Then again we dont follow A levels and getting 90's in English is dependent on luck rather than anything else. Oh ya and Imperial has a pretty lame reputation in India, but Dartmouth is still lamer.</p>

<p>really? imperial's pretty highly regarded in paksitan. I wouldve imagined it'd be the same case across the border. </p>

<p>As i pointed out earlier, the Cambridge exams are ridiculously inflated. The indian board, from what i've heard, is incredibly deflated. The school i go to, practically everyone has 9+ A's. Thats probably one of the reasons why everyone applying to british colleges (barring oxbridge obviously) gets in, since grades are ALL british colleges care about. But our american college admissions (while probably better than most schools) are far from stellar. Only like 10-12 people got into 'top' american universities, despite the fact that practicallly everyone applied to the US, while only a select few applied to england. And i can tell you right now, there are maybe 30 people in our entire school i would call 'impressive'. Most people going off to british colleges (from my school) are just people who stay in their little holes, don't go for the whole human interaction thing, run away when a person of another gender says hi, devote their entire lives to getting an A in Pakistan Studies, and go around trying to rub it in everyone elses face when they do. They never help out when in bake sales, school funcitons community service etc., and when they do, its all for college apps. 'Good' american colleges will generally not take these kind of people in. Now if you go to a british college, chances are you'll be surrounded by them. Do you honestly want that? </p>

<p>Cambridge at an undergrad level is better than cal for computer science. Thats a given. I dunno about grad schools.</p>

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Cambridge better than Berkeley for Computer Science .. I am sorry sir , NO effing way!!!

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As ammarsfound said: "Cambridge at an undergrad level is better than cal for computer science.". Berkeley is great for graduate school, but its undergraduate program just sucks.</p>

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That's actually quite debatable. The simplest observation is that American students have different preferences from British students. You wouldn't find many people here applying to Oxbridge, and vice-versa.

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Well, that's my (and other people's) experience. And not only that. In the states, you can apply to as many schools as you want. Plus admission process is pretty random from the applicant's POV. Whereas in UK, you can only apply to 6 schools, and if you apply to Oxbridge, you have to go there for interview, tests, etc. The point is that only people who have a realistic chance apply, whereas people with not-so-good stats might (and do) apply to top US schools (and do get in, sometimes).
But you're right, that's off-topic.</p>

<p>So on-topic: I'm no expert on Dartmouth, but I guess it's a very good undergraduate school. This thread is really ridiculous.</p>

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<p>I will answer all your questions once and for all.

This statement has no logic at all. Every country has their top universities. China has Beida, Tsinghua and Fudan, Japan has Tokyo and Kyoto. Are you going to say that we are going to put all the top universities of industrialised countries down as top universities?

Don't try to force your way through. This is like asking "Which is better? Oxford or Cambridge" or "Which is better? Iraqi National University or National University of Afghanistan". UTAustin and Dartmouth are both probably on the same league and are quite unknown to me.

I have no incentive to talk ill about Dartmouth. I just want to know why the Americans perceive Dartmouth so highly when in fact it is abysmal in all the world rankings and int'l perceptions.</p>

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<p>

Much of the above is nonsense and flawed argument.
If CIE has inflated grades, so does SATIIs or APs. You personally must know how amazingly easy is to get a 800 for SAT Subject tests, let's be honest here. I took a nap during the Chemistry part and still walk away with 800. I scored 800 in 3 subject and probably can score 800 in two more subjects, confidently (and one more if I have luck, and that's MathI). 3As students get to enter Imperial. That's a hell lot of rubbish, so many students who are predicted 3As are rejected by Imperial this year. If you don't know, the average A-level score for Imperial last year is 4As+. Please check the Times career website. If your friends are only getting 3As and going there, they are probably a disgrace, since they are, well, below average. Many students at Imperial has Special Paper/AEA distinctions, and that includes me as well.</p>

<p>Let's go back to Cornell. 3As is a confirmed triple 800 in SATIIs. Go and check the college admission data for Cornell. The majority won't even have a single 800!!! And you are talking about inflated grades for the CIE side!</p>

<p>You don't even need straight 800s for SATIIs to enter Cornell (which means you don't even need 3As, ABB would suffice). For SATI, it is basically a verbal test, since the math part is again a sure 790/800 (high ceiling). You also need to do General Paper for A-levels, so frankly I don't see where is argument coming from. Clearly, you can be much worst academically and still get in Cornell.</p>

<p>As for exceptional performance in ECs: I don't count myself as exceptional. I belong to a sports team, in the executive committee, and my team managed to get 1st runner up for a national competition. Think about how many different sports are out there and how many 1st/2nd/3rd there are going to b, then multiply by the number of people in each team. I am very active in school-based T&F events, and regularly win trophies. But that's only at a school level. I am in 2 other clubs but play a more dormant role.</p>

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<p>

I am getting my source from official sources, and you are getting yours from stories you hear from strangers on the internet. You talked about reputation, and you didn't give really strong argument to show that Dartmouth has a better reputation than Cornell. At least I attempt to deliver it via Google Treads, which is really the closest thing because there is not going to be a newspaper article writing that Dartmouth has a better reputation than ______ College.

I am not even comparing Cornell to UTAustin. I believe Cornell is a very good university. UTAustin and Dartmouth are fine colleges. Don't try to use Cornell to buttress your argument. Dartmouth no where near Cornell. </p>

<p>As per your second part, I guess I would just quote my reply to ammarsfound:</p>

<p>

To add on, you don't even need results close to that required to enter Imperial to enter Cornell. As for ECs, go check out the Imperial Union website, and see the Clubs and Communities yourself. As for setting up companies, there are a lot of Imperial spin-offs, mainly tech firms, esp. in biomedical technologies. If Cornell students are founding companies so are Imperial's. So far, I don't know any truly exceptional, ground-breaking companies from them. Stanford has one, and that's Google.</p>

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<p>

Cognitively bias? I guess you have more of this problem. You are the one who place Dartmouth above Oxbridge (Jesue! :D). Give me some prove!! By THES, Shanghai Jiaotong and Newsweek, Dartmouth loses out. How about an alumni count then?</p>

<p>Head of states & other famous people:
Cambridge- Lee Hsien Long - current Prime Minister, Singapore ||| Wong Yan Lung, Secretary for Justice, Hong Kong ||| Andrew Wiles - mathematician who proved Fermat's Last Theorem in 1994
Oxford - Manmohan Singh - current Prime Minister, India, ||| Tony Blair - current Prime Minister, United Kingdom
Imperial - Rajiv Gandhi - former Prime Minister, India,||| Danny Lui, founder of Lenovo (the company that overtook IBM Computer!)
LSE - Lee Kuan Yew - former Prime Minister, Singapore,||| George Soros, Hedge fund manager</p>

<p>Now please go and list those from Dartmouth!</p>

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<p>


The reason is no different from your friend who is choosing Harvard over Brown.</p>

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<p>
[quote=i) i really doubt if english colleges care about geographic diversity as much as american colleges, since english colleges take a much less holistic approach to admissions than american colleges.
ii) Imperials PRETTY well known in pakistan, another colonial country, so quite a few people take up the offers
[/quote]

UK universities care a lot about diversity now. Currently LSE has the most no. of int'l student, at around 45%, and Imperial and Oxbridge are behind as they only have about 30%. LSE is quite flooded with (PRC) Chinese now, and frankly, it is good because you got to network with so many people from China. You definitely understand the opportunities in China are immense.</p>

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<p>"Much of the above is nonsense and flawed argument.
If CIE has inflated grades, so does SATIIs or APs. You personally must know how amazingly easy is to get a 800 for SAT Subject tests, let's be honest here. </p>

<p>So? Which college ever claimed SAT's were the sole criteria for admission? At most of the top schools they're given very little weightage. I have 2 2400s, i didn't get into every school i applied to. I didnt get into amherst (which isnt even on the world rankings), but got into columbia, dartmouth and duke. They don't care about SAT scores. which makes your entire argument useless.</p>

<p>Let's go back to Cornell. 3As is a confirmed triple 800 in SATIIs. Go and check the college admission data for Cornell. The majority won't even have a single 800!!! And you are talking about inflated grades for the CIE side!</p>

<p>Again with the SAT talk. NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR COOL COOL 800S.</p>

<p>You don't even need straight 800s for SATIIs to enter Cornell (which means you don't even need 3As, ABB would suffice). For SATI, it is basically a verbal test, since the math part is again a sure 790/800 (high ceiling). You also need to do General Paper for A-levels, so frankly I don't see where is argument coming from. Clearly, you can be much worst academically and still get in Cornell.</p>

<p>Even if the SATs did count for something, General has nothing to do with aptitude, and everything to do with writing style and general knowledge. If there is a connection between the two, its very small.</p>

<p>As for exceptional performance in ECs: I don't count myself as exceptional. I belong to a sports team, in the executive committee, and my team managed to get 1st runner up for a national competition. </p>

<p>Okayyy man. youre so cool. But again, just because your president of this club or secretary of that, most good american colleges (and i am excluding cornell and caltech from this example) dont care. They want to see what drives you, and where that drives gotten you. You sound like you were just in this 'national competition' to so you could brag about it to your college. That isn't what a adcoms want to see.</p>

<p>The reason is no different from your friend who is choosing Harvard over Brown.</p>

<p>My friend chose Harvard because its Harvard. Cal is not harvard. It doesn't have the i) wow factor, ii) grade inflation, iii) recruitment opportunities that harvard provides. </p>

<p>3As students get to enter Imperial. That's a hell lot of rubbish, so many students who are predicted 3As are rejected by Imperial this year. If you don't know, the average A-level score for Imperial last year is 4As+. Please check the Times career website. If your friends are only getting 3As and going there, they are probably a disgrace, since they are, well, below average.</p>

<p>What nonsense. My 'offer' was ABB. And i'd applied for biology, which is supposed to be the hardest/one of the hardest options to get into.</p>

<p>My friends are disgracing Imperial eh? I suppose in the same way Al Gore disgraced Harvard by entering with only a 1355 SAT score? or stephen king by getting a 1300? Or every minority in the USA disgracing every college in the usa (hypsmcd+ivies included) by getting, on average' 1800s?</p>

<p>UK universities care a lot about diversity now. Currently LSE has the most no. of int'l student, at around 45%, and Imperial and Oxbridge are behind as they only have about 30%</p>

<p>Exactly my point. Why should they care about diversity if htey already have such a large international population. If anything, they should be concerned about decreasing the number of chinese. </p>

<p>I think YOU are disgracing imperial by being here</p>

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<p>lol, spencer is apparently from Raffles Junior College, judging by the way he talks and thinks so highly of himself.</p>

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<p>Stop this thread already.</p>

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<p>

Congrats! 2400 in both SATI and II are hard to come by! Seriously!

Not really, General Paper is a very good test of linguistic skill. It tests on the things that matter: construct a long essay and read critically.

Not so. I join clubs and train hard for my own fulfillment. It is about team-work, team-spirit, not "individual excellence". So many people who want to get into top US schools would fight insanely hard to do something "exceptional", like start clubs, become presidents, or just get into exco without really wanting to contribute to the club, so as to write it down on their essay. In my opinion, this really defeats the purpose of what ECs are for.

That's the standard offer for Biology, and Biology is the subject with the lowest offer across Imperial. Engineering, Maths, Computing and countless others would only give straight As offers, and that's only if you did the "correct" subject combination.
I just quote Times:
<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/career_and_jobs/graduate_management/article582762.ece%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/career_and_jobs/graduate_management/article582762.ece&lt;/a>

[quote]
Entry requirements at Imperial are the UK’s toughest and the average entry tariff is currently 520 (four Grade As at A-level equals a UCAS tariff of 480).

[/quote]
Hence the average is currently 4As+.

There is no need to really decrease the no. of Chinese, since the growth engine for the next 20 years is going to be there and the school may as well start planting more grads there so they would have more Danny Luis (founder, Lenovo, the company that took over IBM Computer, Thinkpad...)</p>

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<p>I don;t understand why this is so hard. Dartmouth UNDERGRAD is perceived very highly and its UNDERGRAD program is a top 10 (in my opinion its #6-7) school. IMO some internationals don't understand the difference between an undergrad college and a graduate universities.</p>

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[quote]
This statement has no logic at all. Every country has their top universities. China has Beida, Tsinghua and Fudan, Japan has Tokyo and Kyoto. Are you going to say that we are going to put all the top universities of industrialised countries down as top universities?

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<p>You're missing my point. SNU is very much highly coveted in South Korea. Admissions is obviously, extremely competitive. I had a roommate last year from South Korea and he could relate to the SNU-mania among Korean high school students. It's honestly a lot like Japanese kids wanting to get into Todai. SNU being ranked 63 is very very dubious to me. </p>

<p>Let's be honest here. If you're a Korean student, and you get into SNU, you are going to get a great job after graduation. Boy, I wish other schools had job security like SNU does (including Oxbridge). The Seoul National brand name has an extremely high market value in South Korea. And that's what matters.</p>

<p>And believe me spencer, I didn't just arbitrarily pick Seoul National. You can ask the other Korean students here on CC what they think of SNU. But I can tell you that as a Canadian, the University of Toronto in no way deserves its rank on the THES. I'm going to be frank here, job security for a lot of UofT grads isn't all that great. So how do you explain UofT being substantially higher on the THES than SNU?</p>

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No, but I cannot understand why you mention SNU instead of UTokyo.

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<p>Oh really? Can't put 2 and 2 together, spencer? Isn't it obvious? I didn't make an argument for UTokyo because it was already relatively high up on the list. The SNU ranking is really just a large, gaping hole in your argument for the rankings. But hey, if you honestly believe that UT Austin and UofT are far better than SNU, then I'm not going to stop you from deluding yourself. It's not my job to do that.</p>

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[quote]
Don't try to force your way through. This is like asking "Which is better? Oxford or Cambridge" or "Which is better? Iraqi National University or National University of Afghanistan". UTAustin and Dartmouth are both probably on the same league and are quite unknown to me.

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<p>UT Austin and Dartmouth are in the same league? Really spencer? I don't know about that. You seem to know full well what Dartmouth is - you started this thread after all. Who would've given a second thought to UT Austin? If Dartmouth is so unknown to you, why even start with this thread?</p>

<p>It's a simple yes, or no question. I asked for a straight up answer. Do not equivocate and say, "Well yeah...they're about the same." Well if that's true, then why even bother with the rankings in the first place? Hey, I'm not a fan of rankings but since you invoked them, we're going to use them.</p>

<p>So, is UT Austin unequivocally, the better school? Stop equivocating. Answer the question.</p>

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I have no incentive to talk ill about Dartmouth. I just want to know why the Americans perceive Dartmouth so highly when in fact it is abysmal in all the world rankings and int'l perceptions.

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<p>Oh really?</p>

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The question is whether US News has been over-rating Dartmouth all the time because it is commonly regarded as an Ivy League blah blah blah whereas in THES and Shanghai Jiaotong, Dartmouth is rated like nothing more than a crap school.

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In my opinion, while Dartmouth is the most overvalued school in the US,

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That's only because you keep on believing in the US News ranking that places Dartmouth so high up when it obviously doesn't deserve that standing

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<p>It seems like you've already made your mind about Dartmouth. Listen, it's fine if you're coming on here to ask an honest question to get our facts on the matter. But that's not what you're doing. You came on here, with your mind already made up, and are trying to get people to write the responses that you like to hear.</p>

<p>spencer, if you wanted me to say what you like to hear, then the next time you make a thread - PM me with what you want me to say. But we already gave you our facts on this. And you didn't like them.</p>