<p>I am a Vietnamese international who's applying to Dartmouth. I'm just curious about if there are many Vietnamese at Dartmouth. Could any current students help me with this?</p>
<p>We have a fairly active Vietnamese Student Association here, by the way.</p>
<p>I find it kind of amusing that a Dartmouth student's moniker is "bulldogbull".
Closet Yalie? haha</p>
<p>Then you'll enjoy this, Chandler:</p>
<p>YouTube</a> - DYE Prank</p>
<p>Ahaha, VSA is a joke here.</p>
<p>aerialblue, could you give reasons why VSA is a joke at Dartmouth?</p>
<p>By the way, the DYE prank is awesome :D</p>
<p>The club is terribly run, and it only has like a few (perhaps only one) major event every year. At the risk of outing myself, I visited the VSA at Yale - and the Yale club's exec board was SO MUCH more skilled, and its administration was incredibly fluid. People were interested in Vietnamese culture there, and the Yale VSA had high membership.</p>
<p>Though it should be said that this is a problem with Dartmouth extracurricular activities in general. This is why I basically only stick to research, sports, and studying. Quite frankly, the ECs here are terrible. Because of the D-Plan, exec boards have really high turnover rates (and so clubs can't be run as efficiently/well). Plus, there's a much higher emphasis on Greek Life here, which I feel sucks away life from the dorms and from extracurricular involvement. </p>
<p>If you're interested in Asian culture, I would give the DCCS (Dartmouth Chinese Culture Society) a try (even though the DCCS is also quite poorly run compared to comparable clubs at the other Ivies). Dartmouth is known to have terrible extracurricular activities, so if that kind of stuff is important to you, I would think long and hard about enrolling.</p>
<p>Thanks for your information on Dartmouth's ECs, aerialblue. I've heard people complaining about the D-Plan, but I also knew that several people took advantage of the plan to do internship and travel abroad. </p>
<p>I knew that Greek life is so dominant in Dartmouth, but never thought that it would be that strong. </p>
<p>I went to Brown and Yale' websites, and I could easily navigate the cultural clubs at those schools. For Dartmouth, it was hard to do so. So I guess cultural clubs are really not well ran in Dartmouth.</p>
<p>DAO is good. A lot of the really obscure and smaller "ethnic" clubs are not as well run, but I think it would be a little absurd to think that every EC was so perfectly run. There's plenty of cultural clubs available at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>And please take every bit of advice with a grain of salt. Idk what's wrong with aerial. Sounds a bit bitter to me.</p>
<p>OP, you can believe the guy who will only praise Dartmouth, or you can take the guy who'll give you a balanced view of the school. Dartmouth is strong in many things - excellent student-professor relationships, amazing undergraduate programs (the Senior Fellowship is to die for), a generally fluid administration, and easy opportunities for research (if you seek them - which many people do not). In fact, I have told the OP that I would prefer Dartmouth over Brown (and Penn, and Cornell).</p>
<p>Extracurricular activities and clubs are not a strength of the school. And actually, DAO is quite poorly run (I invite you to take a look at the AAA's of Harvard and Columbia - there's simply no competition). Come to Dartmouth for the other things, like having a holistic undergraduate education.</p>
<p>Hmmm...this is also very interesting stuff related to the OP's interests:</p>
<p>
Hello all,</p>
<p>As many of you have probably heard/read, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership (OPAL) was mentioned in a recent D article as "deemed to be of lesser importance" for the overall Dartmouth experience. As the college reviews the budget to make decisions in the coming months, we want to remind them of the important role that OPAL serves and of all the students that it benefits. As participants in the Dartmouth Asian Organization, you have likely seen how OPAL has worked with us to facilitate academic, personal, social, and cultural development and success.</p>
<p>I ask that you take a moment to view a petition that is being circulated and highly encourage you to sign: Defending</a> Diversity.</p>
<p>Thank you,</p>
<p>David Louie '09 Dartmouth Asian Organization President
</p>
<p>aerialblue makes some really good points with regards to ECs at Dartmouth. i dont have experience with ECs at other ivies so i cant comment on that but other than that i think aerialblue is right on.</p>
<p>Hey I'm Vietnamese too, but no one really cares. haha. I just wanted to comment. WOW bnguyen (that's my mom's last name too!) you're really good at english! what city are you from?</p>
<p>As another illustration in point, the Blitz system here makes it difficult to get any PR related things done. People are constantly inundated with Blitzes every single day, and so any given Blitz email is treated as fairly insignificant.</p>
<p>It's also not hard to notice the differences in extracurricular involvement between the Ivy Leagues if you have friends from the other schools. At the other Ivies, individual events are emphasized greatly - many, many people create Facebook groups, place Facebook pictures of events on their profiles, change their Facebook statuses, etc. Those kinds of actions are not really common among Dartmouth students.</p>
<p>What I would propose for starters, is a Blitzmail recipients limit. Currently you can Blitz to about 500 people per email - reducing the limit to say, 10 or 20, will drive the incentive for people to rely more on their personal Blitz lists and less on say, the 2011 list that gets circulated to pretty much every COSO organization. This in turn, will provide an incentive to develop more comprehensive email listservs (during Orientation, or just in general). Email listservs are absolutely key in extracurricular involvement - and I personally know that the Harvard AAA is excellent about keeping comprehensive lists (despite a vastly inferior email system).</p>
<p>Plus...many people will be happy about getting less spam.</p>
<p>Hey xxfh10xx, I'm from Ho Chi Minh City. I bet you know where it is :D</p>
<p>Aerial, u r such an active contributor. Could you explain about the Blitz system? Why does that limit PR?</p>
<p>About the Facebook comment, I think that's just personal preference. Somebody is active and somebody is not. I just check my facebook on weekends.</p>
<p>As a white person, would it be awkward to join the Chinese Cultural Society? I'm really into Asian culture stuff and I'm learning Chinese... but if the other members were to look down on me for being a white in an Asian club, that wouldn't be very fun.</p>
<p>And also, the DYE prank is absolutely EPIC.</p>
<p>To be politically correct around here, you're from Saigon. Just saying.</p>
<p>Blitz is basically a hybrid IM/Email client from Dartmouth that allows you to rather easily, effortless, and almost instantaneously send messages to other people from Dartmouth using their monikers, names, or email addresses (if you're masochistic). For example, if your friend specifies his name as "xre15" in the DND directory, then every time you type in "xre15" in the address bar when sending a message, he gets that message.</p>
<p>You'll get so many Blitzes in a day that people will tend to treat each email piece as extremely insignificant (i.e. deleting emails before even reading them) - so Dartmouth email becomes a rather ineffective way to spread news of an event on campus. The problem is, it's easy to spam on Blitz.</p>
<p>
[quote]
About the Facebook comment, I think that's just personal preference. Somebody is active and somebody is not. I just check my facebook on weekends.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, but the difference between Dartmouth students and people from the other Ivies is that those people turn Facebook into a tool for activism, campus news, and just generally disseminating message about important events.</p>
<p>
[quote]
As a white person, would it be awkward to join the Chinese Cultural Society? I'm really into Asian culture stuff and I'm learning Chinese... but if the other members were to look down on me for being a white in an Asian club, that wouldn't be very fun.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Honestly, why would you think that? The only people who make a big deal about attending DCCS or other Asian events are those uber pro-Greek life anti-SLI Americanists. Likewise, the only people who make a big deal about fratting are those "woe-is-me" minorities (and that's not even everybody anyways).</p>
<p>Like...stuff like this article right here is completely garbage:</p>
<p>TheDartmouth.com</a> | Separation Anxiety</p>
<p>And the best part of it all:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Personally, I know that I need to overcome my fear of attending cultural and minority meetings, and I hope that these groups are willing to welcome me with open arms as well.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Like...seriously.</p>
<p>Wow, I love the posts so much. I got so much info about Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Cultural groups welcome you. Why do you need to hold back? We are in 2009, not like 1800s. I guess students nowadays are generally more tolerant of others.</p>
<p>Aerialblue, how is your one day at Dartmouth?</p>
<p>Wow, I love the posts so much. I got so much info about Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Cultural groups welcome you. Why do you need to hold back? We are in 2009, not like 1800s. I guess students nowadays are generally more tolerant of others.</p>
<p>Aerialblue, how is your one day at Dartmouth?</p>