On paper, once again, the Class of 2000 appears to be the most academically talented group of students ever admitted to Dartmouth.
A record-setting 11,398 students applied for a place in the Class of 2000. Of the 2,273 who were accepted, 1,130 have decided to enroll, a significant jump from the 1,048 students who enrolled in the Class of 1999.
The clas will contain more valedictorians then ever before, with 199 students ranked first in their high school graduating class. Eighty salutatorians have enrolled. Eighty-nine percent of the enrolled students were ranked in the top tenth of their high school graduating class.
The recentered scores on the Scholastic Achievement Test also show improvement over the Class of 1999's scores.
While both the Class of 1999 and the Class of 2000 scored a mean of 704 on the verbal section of the test, the mean on the math section of the test rose nine points to 711 for the Class of 2000.
A record 66 percent of the class graduated from public high school, while the remaining 34 percent attended private or parochial schools. 825 schools from around the world are represented.
Reversing a trend of increasing female enrollment, more than 52 percent of the class is male. The Class of 1999 was the first class ever at Dartmouth to enroll more women than men, with women making up 50.2 percent of the class.
Minority enrollment is also down, making the number of minority students in the Class of 2000 the lowest of any Dartmouth class in the last five years.
Only 5.2 percent of the class is African American, 8.5 percent is Asian American, 3.7 percent is Latino and 1.6 percent is Native American.
By contrast, 6.4 percent of the Class of 1999 is African American, 9.9 percent is Asian American, 5.1 percent is Latino and 2 percent of the class is Native American.
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg told The Dartmouth in May that the fluctuation might be a result of incidents which occurred last winter, when racist slurs were written on the doors of two residences occupied by Asian students.
Furstenberg also blamed the decline in the number of minority students on increased competition from other colleges. "Everyone is trying to convince these students to come" to their colleges, he said.
Following in the footsteps of previous classes, the majority of the Class of 2000 expressed academic interest in the sciences, with more than 46 percent expecting to major in a scientific field. 24 percent expressed interest in the social sciences, 17 percent showed interest in the humanities or interdisciplinary subjects, and 12 percent have yet to decide what field to enter.
More than 40 percent of the Class of 2000 will receive financial aid.
