The Mirror Grills Some Grad Students: The Word From Dartmouth Undergrad Alums

While looking for another never-fail Father's Day gift at Traditionally Trendy, you might notice strange segments of the merchandise that bear the same Dartmouth green but a foreign crest. These, of course, are for the graduate schools. For many undergrads, knowledge of the grad schools ends there. Yes, we know there are graduate students because we can see them in the window of The Canoe Club as we peer longingly in on our way back to campus from Molly's on a Friday night. In general however, the overlap between the undergraduates and graduates at Dartmouth is a narrow one.Students who attended Dartmouth College and continue (or return) to pursue graduate degrees here have the best sense of both sides of the coin. So what makes a person want to study further at Dartmouth?The unsurprising consensus seems to be that students who return for graduate degrees enjoyed their experiences as undergraduates.Paul Salipante, '07, is now in the PhD program at Thayer."I had a great experience as an undergrad and that's part of the reason I stayed around," he said.
John Moran '05, Tu'11 finds that he sometimes has to curtail his enthusiasm for his Dartmouth experience in interviews with companies who are looking for candidates with an "international perspective" that might be more of a given at a larger, urban school."[Interviewers] have asked do you just love Hanover that much?' and that is part of the answer, but I have to almost downplay that a little bit and sort of say well yeah, I like Dartmouth a lot, but I didn't just go there for grad school because I wanted to relive college for a couple of years," he said."But the good thing is that Tuck, and the other schools as well, are so excellent in their own right that you can make a pretty strong case that no, I chose Tuck because I just thought it was a great school in its own right,'" Moran added. It's clear though, that graduate students and undergraduates at Dartmouth don't share the same experiences. Kelly Everhart, '09, is now pursuing a Masters degree through the EARS department. She too, enjoyed her undergraduate experience, but is not trying to do it over in graduate school. "Dartmouth is really fun, it's got a really unique social scene, and it's really easy for it to be it's very own little closed system," she said. "It's good for a while, but I'm really happy that it's over. Even in the Upper Valley, believe it or not, there's a big wide world with a lot of really cool people and a lot of really cool opportunities." Salipante felt similarly about the social experience of an undergraduate. "I mean it sort of had a time and place," he said. "I've done it and I've had fun, but now my focus is on graduate school."Tuck has developed its own system to foster the social lives of its participants, known as Tuck Tails. "It's basically free drinks sponsored by a company and they give a presentation and you can learn more about something like the private equity industry, for example, and everyone just kind of hangs out afterwards," Moran said.
But don't let the phrase "private equity industry" fool you; students at Tuck still know how to have a good time."I think for a lot of people it's like yay I'm back in college, now I don't have to be serious anymore' like they're bringing the college side out again a little bit," Moran said.Nor does being a graduate student at Dartmouth mean the same thing for people in different programs. Students at Thayer and Tuck rarely interact, according to Salipante, while there is slightly more overlap between Tuck and Dartmouth Medical School."A lot of the Thayer students like me got involved with a professor that they enjoyed working with and stayed around for their masters and that puts you in a very different place," Salipante said."Even within a single program, experiences differ greatly based on age. "There's a little bit more diversity [at Tuck] of where we are in terms of the stage of our lives," Moran said. "So some people are like, I graduated three years ago, I still party like crazy' and other people are like, I'm going to go home and feed my baby now."Everhart, who is closer in age to her undergraduate counterparts, feels that the undergraduate social scene is there for her if she wants it. "I feel really lucky, like I'm having my cake and eating it too because I'm here, [and] a lot of my friends are still here," she said. "And if I ever really miss it and I want to go hang out I can still do it."Like the varying experiences of undergraduates, the experiences of graduates at Dartmouth are as diverse and more. Those students who choose to pursue multiple degrees here get an interesting insight into two very different sides of Dartmouth. Though they may have little else in common, one thing that they do share is a love for Dartmouth.