Dartmouth is the outdoor Ivy. The campus is in the mountains of New Hampshire, and offers an exceptional educational experience in a rugged setting ideal for lovers of hiking, skiing, climbing, and exploring. You don’t need to love the woods to love Dartmouth, though. Most of all, you need to treasure community.
4,000 undergraduates and 6,700 students call Dartmouth home, pursuing degrees across over 40 departments and programs through a liberal arts curriculum that emphasizes breadth alongside depth. The majority of classes at Dartmouth have 20 or fewer students, and those at the college “learn to ask bigger questions” inside the classroom and outside of it. Sometimes outside is just outside the building, and sometimes it’s further afield. In April 2024, a group of senior monastic teachers traveled from their monasteries to do a week-long residence at Dartmouth leading meditations and discussions on campus, and 60% of students study off campus during their time at Dartmouth.
Students interested in Dartmouth should also know about the Middle-Income Affordability Initiative, which went into action in 2024. As a result of a $150 million gift focused on scholarships, more students than ever can attend Dartmouth with zero parental/family contribution. This has only increased the popularity of Dartmouth, and they received over 30,000 applicants for the Class of 2028. They extended an offer of admission to 1,685 students, resulting in an overall admission rate of only 5.3% — a record low.
In this post, we’ll break down how you need to be spending your summers to increase your chances of being in that tiny percentage of admitted students.
If you’re applying to top colleges, send us an email. We help outstanding students get into exceptional colleges.
What does Dartmouth want to see from your summer?
When you’re preparing to apply to college, everything you do matters. That may already be obvious to you during the school year, but you also really need to put your summers into play. Summers are the largest block of time you have during the year that is yours to do with what you will. Those two months or so every summer are extremely powerful, so it’s important to make them work for you. If Dartmouth is your dream school, that means underlining what you care about academically and in your extracurriculars. Below, we’ll break down exactly what that means and how you should use your summers to increase your odds of getting into Dartmouth.
Augment Your Academics
Ok, so the summer isn’t the school year, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use the summer to put some extra gold stars on your resume. We recommend that high school students try to take an additional for-credit class from a local university or community college before applying to college. This illustrates that they can complete college-level coursework, and allows you to push beyond the limitations of what your high school has on offer.
If you want to get away from home for a bit, there are also summer programs at colleges and universities, many of which offer for-credit intensive courses. The Dartmouth pre-college summer program, launched for the summer of 2024, isn’t one of those, though. They are offering three, two-weeks sessions for students in grades 10-12 focused on non-credit courses in nine subjects, including courses like “Business Foundations.”
The tuition for the Dartmouth program is steep, and students are required to submit test scores and transcripts as part of the application. We don’t generally recommend university summer programs that are super expensive, but Dartmouth takes demonstrated interest into account and attending the summer program is a great way to demonstrate interest in the university. Does it guarantee if you’ll get in? No, not at all. But it will likely give you a boost if you perform very well in the courses you take and build relationships with the instructors such that they may vouch for your application when you apply. So, it may be worth it for you if your family can swing it financially.
There’s one other thing you should consider doing over the summer, and while it isn’t fun it is totally worth it. You should be studying for the SAT or ACT. Whereas many colleges are continuing their test-optional policies, or even making those policies permanent, Dartmouth has reverted back to requiring the SAT or ACT of all applicants. They made this decision based on an intensive study by Dartmouth scholars, through which they found that requiring the SAT or ACT actually improves their applicant pool, perhaps counterintuitively encouraging more low-income and less-privileged applicants, and that success on the SAT/ACT is indeed predictive of academic success in college.
Emphasize Your Interests
There’s more to do during the summer than school and studying for tests, though. Most importantly, we want you to lean into what you love. If you’re an artist, for example, do more of your art. Don’t just make art, but also share your art, show your art, and support other artists by working at a summer art camp, interning as a studio assistant for a local artist you admire, or volunteering for an arts non-profit.
The two best ways of leaning into what you love are internships and jobs. Getting an internship or a job with someone who is doing something similar to what you want to do someday, even if it isn’t exactly what you see for yourself, is an amazing way to chart your path, explore your potential future, and show what you care about to every college you apply to. Even getting a job as a server at a local club can be an amazing lesson in hospitality and customer service that can set you on a trajectory for success in any career that requires a high level of service and client cultivation.
On the internship front, if you’re scratching your head over the how of getting an internship, start with second degree connections. Look at your network, then go one step beyond. Are there friends of your parents who you admire career-wise, or the parents of your friends who have your dream job? If so, ask them for advice and see if there may be an internship opportunity. Make a resume first, though, so you can show them how awesome you are on paper.
Have Fun
Summer shouldn’t only be about work, though. You need to have fun, too! Spend time exploring, and don’t try to make it about proving anything to anyone. Go on bike rides. Go to the beach. Take a hike. Host a drive-in movie theater party at your house. Grill a perfect burger. Basically, enjoy yourself. Travel, too, if you want — but don’t expect to put it on your application. This part isn’t about what you can get, but rather giving yourself the time you need to recharge, reset, and be ready for success when school starts back up again.
But Also Tune In
Don’t have so much fun, though, that you disconnect from your ultimate goal of getting into Dartmouth. As we said, they track demonstrated interest, which means that they take your level of interest into account when considering your application. So, let them know that you’re into them by attending information sessions (on campus or virtually).
You should also definitely listen to the Admissions Beat Podcast, Dartmouth’s own admissions podcast where they cover everything from how to pick courses for your senior year of high school to interpreting your SAT or ACT scores and how they measure up to Dartmouth’s expectations.
If Dartmouth is your dream school, you’ll need to use every moment you have to improve your chances of admission. Sometimes that means actively improving your application, like taking courses, and sometimes it means taking care of yourself through that bike ride we mentioned. Dartmouth wants to see students who pursue passion, so show them yours.
If you’re applying to Dartmouth, send us an email. We help top students get into exceptional colleges.