<p>I visited Dartmouth on Thursday and thought it was amazing. The town was great. The campus was beautiful. The engineering school was solid. However, I do have one qualm with Dartmouth: the kids. I am worried that the kids are going to be too focused on partying/alcohol/frats. I am worried that they are going to be more on the preppy side where they are not openly friendly. I visited Middlebury too, and there was a HUGE emphasis on being nice. I didn't find that so at Dartmouth. What are your experiences in this regard?</p>
<p>For some mysterious reason, Dartmouth kids have this reputation. Year after year after year, knowledgeable people come onto this site and provide facts that don’t support it.</p>
<p>You were there. What was your impression? That’s what matters most.</p>
<p>You are probably right about fraternities and alcohol being a major focus of campus social life (more so than at most of the Ivy League schools I visited other than possibly Penn – and I also have to say that I never visited Cornell), but I found the students to be extremely friendly and gregarious. To me, they also seemed, as a group, to be among the most normal and balanced of the kids at all of the schools – which might help explain why they do particularly well in the “real world” after graduation. I also sensed a very inclusive culture (although I certainly may have missed some things here), which might lessen some of the downsides often associated with the greek scene.</p>
<p>I was there for half a day, and I got some sense of the kids. However, I don’t think I got the full picture (also I wasn’t there during the night).</p>
<p>Like any other school in the country, there is a contingent that drinks and parties more than it should; there is a group that doesn’t drink at all; and the rest are in the middle. Dartmouth is an extremely diverse school in virtually every context, so I assure you, OP, that you will find your niche.</p>
<p>My daughter is a non-drinker and likes Dartmouth just fine. Since she didn’t party she was lonely for about the first week of her freshman year. But then she began to find friends and more people with similar interests (in her case, mostly music). Now she has lots of friends and is having a wonderful time there. Dartmouth’s overall vibe is dominated by the Greek scene, but it’s a large and varied enough place that everyone can fit in one way or another.</p>
<p>“she has lots of friends and is having a wonderful time there. Dartmouth’s overall vibe is dominated by the Greek scene, but it’s a large and varied enough place that everyone can fit in one way or another.”</p>
<p>“so I assure you, OP, that you will find your niche.”</p>
<p>This is what I am worried about: a divided social scene where everyone NEEDS to have a niche.</p>
<p>I think by “niche,” DmouthGrad2014 meant to say your “friends” or your “type of people” or your “peeps.” You’re not gonna love everyone no matter where you go, and not everyone’s gonna love you. You’ll gravitate to the people you prefer. Groups overlap. It’s like Venn diagrams – not like a drawing of the planets.</p>
<p>Exactly. Every college is a collection of niches. And Dartmouth is a place where you will very likely find nice set of good friends whether you participate in the frat drinking scene or not.</p>
<p>I will be attending Dartmouth this fall, and I too originally had concerns about the drinking/party reputation that Dartmouth has. However, I think that no matter where you go, there will be people who drink, and there will be people who don’t drink. I’m sure it will be easy enough for me to find a group of friends who know how to have fun without alcohol.</p>
<p>The drinking is overemphasized, even within the Greek system, there are a number of affiliated students who don’t “rage” or “hang out” all that much, but are still active members of their houses.</p>
<p>It’s interesting you got that impression; the first thing that struck me about Dartmouth was how welcoming everyone was, and how they wanted to make sure you loved being there as much as they did. There definitely are preppy students at Dartmouth, but there are also a ton of other types of people, and my favorite thing is that I have friends who fit just about every “label” Students tend to have very diverse interests, so it is amazing to me to find the areas in which I overlap with people. And while we certainly have the Greek scene, it is an inclusive force at Dartmouth…its very open, and very different; I’ve met a lot of people just when I was randomly hanging out in your basement and they came over and introduced themselves, asked me about myself and we struck up a conversation. And you aren’t a big partier, but that happens everywhere, not just in basements. </p>
<p>But the drinking is overemphasized…in general, freshman their first term at Dartmouth consume a lot of alcohol because they can, but after that, the novelty of free, basically unlimited booze wears off. Most people are drinkers, but moderately so…going out and getting trashed four nights a week is not the norm the way it gets portrayed. There are also a number of affiliated non-drinkers, and they are just as much a part of their houses as the drinkers. And 40% are unaffiliated, and perfectly happy being so, including a number of my close friends.</p>
<p>Having said that; I love Dartmouth, I’m incredibly happy here, but if you’ve visited another school where you felt more comfortable, finding a school where you feel like you belong is the most important thing.</p>