<p>I got a likely to Dartmouth and am now waiting on HYP and Penn (Applied to CAS since Wharton is absolutely ridiculous to even attempt and I don't have a huge business-based profile). I hope to study econ and finance and hopefully enter investment management0 or fund management while pursuing a Wall Street career.</p>
<p>Until I got my likely, Dartmouth was always a TAD lower in my mind compared to HYP and Penn-However, recently, I've been learning that Dartmouth is 2nd to none in finance and is even called "Goldman Sachs" on Wall Street. The percentage of finance jobs they send and the alumni network they have is amazing.</p>
<p>I don't think I'll get into HYP or Penn. But going to Dartmouth, could I rightly tell myself that my undergrad education and the opportunities I'll have are no less than those I'd have at HYP or Penn? If so, why is Dartmouth never mentioned in the "big mix" of HYPPC?</p>
<p>Dartmouth is far superior to Penn SAS if you plan to go into finance; there is no question. Wharton, of course, is on the level of HYP when it comes to prestige on Wall Street, but graduates of the School of Arts and Sciences don’t reap the same benefits. The reason Dartmouth has a good name on Wall Street is because Dartmouth alums love Dartmouth, and the alumni connections you make there are probably the best of all eight Ivy League schools. It is a small, essentially liberal arts college that garners a sense of community that schools like Harvard don’t, and I chalk Dartmouth alums’ career-related success to largely that fact. Keep in mind though, a lot of kids from Dartmouth who work on The Street come from certain frats that have good connections. If you so choose to go to Hanover next year, perhaps rushing one of these frats Sophomore year (if you’re not object to the whole Greek system) would be a good idea. Frats are where connections are built a lot of the time… think of it like an old-boy’s network (which it essentially is). </p>
<p>When comparing Dartmouth to HYP, I would say HYP carries slightly more prestige, but connection-wise, Dartmouth is on the same level. Any four of these schools will provide you with ample opportunity to enter the financial sector, though at Dartmouth you may have to seek out the right people to know. </p>
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<p>Absolutely. Dartmouth focuses on its undergraduate education, as most professors at the school teach the undergrads. You will <em>not</em> be as fortunate going to Penn, Harvard or Yale, and though Princeton prides itself in being like a “liberal arts college on steroids”, the attention to undergraduate education is incomparable to that of Dartmouth’s. So yes, the opportunities (career-wise and academically) as well as the education will be superb at Dartmouth. You shouldn’t think otherwise. </p>
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Those who matter know of Dartmouth and its prestige. I’m not 100% sure of what the “big mix” of HYPPC means, but I’m assuming you’re asking why it isn’t considered as prestigious? In my mind and from my experience, Dartmouth is considered extremely prestigious, and I have always considered it as right after HYP, either on par or one rank below Columbia and certainly above Penn SAS. Perhaps its not as well known to some because of its small size and relatively small number of famous alumni. I’m not sure, but perception of the school varies from person-to-person.</p>
<p>Anyways, congratulations on Dartmouth. It’s an excellent school and I hope you seriously consider it.</p>
<p>Thank you for an excellent and detailed answer to my question.</p>
<p>I agree with your point of HYP having a bit more prestige than Dartmouth perhaps, but is prestige necessary to land a high-paying job and climb the financial ladder quickly? My friedn at Dartmouth speaks often of Dartmouth grads landing 90 k-plus starting salaries, which seems to be as good as any HYP graduate.</p>
<p>By HYPPC, I meant HYP Penn and Columbia. It always feels as if these are the top-tier schools, with HYP being absolutely top-tier, while Dmouth, Brown, and Cornell are just…looked on as “lower ivies”. In my mind, given my finance interests, I’d think that Dartmouth is just as good as HYPPC. Penn gets a big rep for being Wall Street feeding, but there’s a catch…other than Wharton, Penn’s other schools don’t feed much into The Street.</p>
<p>Curious, you seem to have worked on Wall St?</p>
<p>I think it’s a bit rash to say Dartmouth’s alumni network is second to none, especially considering Princeton’s alums are perhaps the most loyal out of any top school in terms of donations.</p>
<p>Anecdote. The 2 Wharton grads that I know are not doing as well as the Upenn Engineering undergraduate, 35 years later. He is the only one that is still working on Wall Street and is a Managing Director or something like that.</p>
<p>the attention to undergraduate education at Princeton is at a level above Dartmouth. It just so happens that the academic level of Princeton’s graduate school is a magnitude above Dartmouth’s.</p>
<p>^^^^^^Princeton has about 1,000 more undergraduates, but it provides the equivalent of 400 more full time faculty to teach these 1,000 extra undergraduate students, according to the common data sets for these two institutions. You figure out if the attention to undergraduates at Dartmouth is greater than at Princeton.</p>
<p>Regarding the love of their school and the alumni connections, Princeton is second to none.</p>
<p>Yes, there’s no doubt that Princeton is excellent. But to say that it is “on another level” from Dartmouth and include significant hyperbole is not fair.</p>
<p>Both have certain aspects which they are better at, but they are overall quite equivalent. Princeton might be slightly more prestigious, while Dartmouth might be slightly more enjoyable.</p>
<p>Your bias is quite extraordinary. Is there any quantifiable way to say the connections of a Dartmouth alumni pales in comparison to that of a Princeton grad? I realize my statement is difficult to defend too, but frankly, one could graduate from the notoriously impersonal Columbia with just as useful connections as a Princeton graduate. “Love” and “connections” are very intangible, but I do know for fact that Dartmouth grads have the highest mid-career salary out of any graduate from any school in the country. </p>
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<p>What’s up with the bogus, hyperbolic pretensions? What proof do you have of this? Can you provide legitimate statistics to back up your claim about the 400 more faculty for the additional 1,000 undergrads? Does all of that faculty even teach? Princeton is a bigger research university, so <em>a lot</em> of their faculty does research and use their graduate students to teach… far more than at Dartmouth. Simply given Dartmouth’s smaller size, fewer grad students and less research, professors have the time to and are more eager to teach. That is not to say that isn’t the case for many of Princeton’s classes, and don’t get me wrong, the undergraduate education at Princeton is top-notch too, but you can’t completely disregard the undergraduate experience at Dartmouth simply because it has fewer resources than Princeton. It is a liberal arts college; a high quality of undergraduate education is of utmost importance to the administration. </p>
<p>If you want to make a case for why Princeton is a better school than Dartmouth, this isn’t the right place to do it. Go to one of the myriad “Dartmouth vs. Princeton” threads on here.</p>
<p>I’ve never really thought of Dartmouth as a “lower Ivy” and strongly believe each of the eight schools have their own outstanding departments. As a whole, yes, HYP is the strongest, but that is not to say that going to any of the other five makes you less accomplished of an individual. Penn is a good school for feeding into The Street, but as I said in my first post, most of those kids are Wharton grads. Some Arts and Sciences kids do end up working there too, but they have to be pretty self-directed and know where they want to go and how they’re going to do it. Off the top of my head, I know that Philosophy, Politics and Economics majors tend to fare pretty in getting jobs on Wall Street. That said, don’t major in PPE just because of that. If you do get in and go to Penn (though I think Dartmouth would be a far superior fit), major in what interests you. </p>
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<p>No, but I have family members and friends who do/have.</p>
<p>This is only a record of alumni donations. Love for a school manifests itself in many different ways. You can’t take a single aspect and count it as the whole. Regardless, Dartmouth comes close behind Princeton in alumni giving:</p>
<p>According to USNews (which only lets you access more detailed info on colleges if you have their College Compass which I think you can get for free if you fill out a survey, otherwise it costs $), Dartmouth’s alumni giving rate was 49% last year. Princeton’s was 61%.</p>
<p>I’m just correcting you but, as you’ve stated, all it is is a measure of what % of alums donate. It’s not necessarily a measure of how loving the alumni network is. </p>
<p>To the OP:</p>
<p>See this link, which is from CNNMoney and isn’t just anecdotal evidence trying to convince you that Dartmouth’s economics department is comparable to HYP’s (I’m not saying it isn’t, but just from a layperson’s perspective I have never heard anything phenomenal about Dartmouth’s economics program as I have about its other stronger departments.):</p>
<p>“…That’s because if you got into a “super-elite” school – which essentially means Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), and Stanford – you must be smart. Plus, time spent at those bastions in turn will make you “polished” and attractive to corporate clients. … Even “second-tier” Ivies like Brown, according to Rivera, are suspect for the top firms.”</p>
<p>Dartmouth is not on the same level as HYPW in terms of recruiting. Not to say you won’t find an awesome job, but if you care only about maximizing your chances you should pick Princeton.</p>
<p>How about you take a look at the information bar on the right. Princeton has 2,479 postgrads while Dartmouth has 1,893. Again though, this holds no relevance to OP’s question.</p>