Director of Career Services Skip Sturman told an audience of 150 that the College's reputation commands attention from potential employers in a lecture in Collis Common Ground Saturday morning.
Sturman's lecture was part of 1998 Family Weekend, and the audience was mostly visiting parents.
Employers "find the type of students who would be excellent employees in their organization" at Dartmouth, Sturman said. "They like the analytic bent that Dartmouth students have," he said.
Sturman said "none of these [qualities] are associated with any particular major."
Graduate schools are also attracted to Dartmouth students, he said, pointing to a 71 percent acceptance rate to medical school and a 77 percent acceptance rate to law school for members of the Class of 1995.
Sturman pointed to the continually increasing quality of Dartmouth undergraduates, citing the resume of a '99 woman who had worked as a biomedical researcher, assisted Bosnian war refugees, served as a student ambassador and studied Indian dance.
He said "I've been hard-put to find resumes that don't stack up to this one," since he returned to Career Services six months ago. "We're sending out students with a global awareness ... they know how the world works."
Extensive job listings available to students are another valuable opportunity that Dartmouth provides its students, Sturman said, pointing to the 1,300 job and internship listings on file at Career Services and electronically accessible through the Online Library computer program.
He said 150 companies visit the College each year to hire entry-level employees, job listings are available to students through the Career Services BlitzMail bulletin, 12,000 alumni serve as career advisors to students and plans are underway to share job listings with other institutions.
"These are all things that fall under the category of opportunities available at Dartmouth," Sturman said, noting that such opportunities are "not enough to guarantee jobs or graduate school."
The fast pace of the quarter system and a student body unaccustomed to failure provide some drawbacks to a Dartmouth education, he said.
"Dartmouth does not lend itself to reflection because of the fast pace" of terms, he said. The College does not "do enough to prepare [students] for the inevitable rejections."
Yet Sturman said College students are more prepared to succeed in the real world than students at many other institutions.
"When you leave Dartmouth, you appreciate what the association with Dartmouth means," he said.
