As an international perspective applicant, Dartmouth is a bit of a black box. It’s an Ivy League, and one of the hardest colleges to get into in the United States, but they don’t share much data about the details. While some other Ivies breakdown their admissions data to give applicants insight into the odds, Dartmouth doesn’t. In this post, we’ll demystify Dartmouth and give international applicants the tools they need to stand out for admissions. First, though, let’s talk about what statistics are available.

Dartmouth is the crunchy Ivy, they even have their own forest! And if you’re here, you’ve been waitlisted from Dartmouth and their forest, too. We know that you might be feeling super bummed about this, so we want you to take a few days to feel how you feel and come back ready to go. Because we have some action items for you.

Dartmouth is not known for accepting a ton of transfers. Actually, they’re known for the opposite. They accept very few. Very, very few. “In recent years,” they say, “Dartmouth has enrolled between a handful and two dozen new transfer students.”  For students enrolling in the fall of 2023, Dartmouth received nearly 800 applications, but accepted only a dozen applicants. The transfer acceptance rate was only 1.6%. 

If you’re here, we are assuming you’ve just been rejected ED from Dartmouth and don’t know what to do next. You’re probably reeling and need something to do to keep you occupied. First, we want to say that Dartmouth is an incredibly hard school to get into – a 6% overall acceptance rate and a 20% ED acceptance rate put it solidly in that “far reach” category. You not getting in doesn’t mean you won’t get into another amazing school, and we can say with decades of wisdom that you will go to college and you will be successful!