Stuff Dartmouth Kids Like: Dear '16s, come to Dartmouth!
The first time I saw stars was outside Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. There’s a moment during DOC First-Year Trips near the end of your first day at the Lodj when you haven’t showered for a while and you’ve spent all day meeting new, also unshowered people, and all anybody wants to do is sleep. When we (hey section D!) reached that point, we started meandering up the hill towards bed. The crowd was moving inside slowly, so I stopped to look up at the sky.
I came this close to turning Dartmouth down. Seriously, seriously close. Imagine you’re holding a penny between your thumb and index finger — that’s how close. I toured a lot of colleges, and at the end of it all Dartmouth wasn’t even on my radar. It wasn’t that I disliked it – somehow I just completely forgot it existed. I applied early somewhere else.
When I didn’t get accepted, it was the biggest rejection I had experienced up to that point. I had led, as I suspect a lot of us did, a shiny little life in high school. I was the head of a bunch of activities and generally was on top of things, so I freaked out. There was a Plan B, obviously, but it sucked that I was going to have to use it.
In classic overreacting fashion, I completely overhauled my list. My high school tried to curb our neuroticism and Type A personalities by capping the number of private schools we could apply to at eight. I cut most of my reaches and added some that I thought would be closer to safeties. At the end of my extended freakout, I had six schools. I needed two more.
My friend had received an Early Decision acceptance to Dartmouth. Out of the goodness of his heart and probably a desire to get me to stop talking about the college process, he pitched the Big Green to me. Small, fun, gorgeous campus – he even offered to write my peer recommendation letter. Out of sheer laziness I agreed, and the rest is history.
But not quite. Like I said, I came really close to rejecting Dartmouth. My other choice was Columbia University, which was my default for no better reason than my complete lack of knowledge about Dartmouth, so I thought it was settled. My parents certainly wanted me to go to Columbia – they thought Dartmouth was just a party school.
I decided to go to Dimensions to confirm that I was going to turn it down, and from the second I stepped foot on campus I was fighting a losing battle. It wasn’t love at first sight, but by the end of the weekend I knew that I could never go anywhere else.
I never really chose Dartmouth. There was no big moment for me, no life-changing revelation. There were just a million little things that showed why Dartmouth was right for me.
I realized I didn’t want to go to school in the city – I wanted somewhere where kids were really choosing the school, not the fact that the school was somewhere awesome.
I wanted to get out of New York because I plan to live there someday and never leaving seemed too confining.
I wanted somewhere so collegiate that President Dwight Eisenhower called it “what a college should look like.”
I wanted to be able to go out without putting on a skintight dress and five-inch heels.
I wanted a place with good food and a beautiful setting and classic-looking buildings.
I didn’t know I wanted a place that had shooting range and river docks until I found out that Dartmouth has both.
I loved the sense of tradition, knowing that when I ran around the bonfire or when I graduate on the Green, I will be doing exactly what Dartmouth students have been doing for generations.
Potential ’16s, there has been a lot of press surrounding Dartmouth lately. But I hope you came and talked to us. If you did, then you probably saw that we're not scary, we don’t bite and a lot of us really love this place. Dartmouth isn’t perfect, and it isn’t exactly like Dimensions — though the funny outfits never go away — but it’s pretty great. Hopefully, you saw that for yourself. Welcome home.