What is Liberal Arts?
Before applying and coming to Dartmouth, I had absolutely no idea what the liberal arts meant. As someone who is not from the Northeast of the US, the liberal arts curriculum is often not talked about to you as you apply for college. Personally, I planned on going to a music conservatory but ended up feeling that it wouldn't be right for me. Luckily, I applied to Dartmouth and have been introduced to what a liberal arts education can provide. Contrary to the name, the education style has very little to do with political leanings.
A simple definition for a liberal arts education is a college education which focuses on providing general knowledge to improve intellectual capacities. Therefore, this opposes university education which concentrates on pre-professional and vocational skills (which may be what you want). Dartmouth provides the opportunity to build general knowledge through its requirement of distributive classes. However, they also provide opportunities to build your professional skills within your areas of study!
Although someone could be majoring in Spanish, they still have to take their distributive classes which build general knowledge. In addition, they could choose to do other things like be on the pre-health track which allows them to build skills to apply for medical school! Dartmouth provides many resources for its students in terms of educational opportunities (read other blogs!).
For me, the fact that Dartmouth is liberal arts at its core is absolutely amazing, and I could not be more grateful that I ended up here. I have studied subjects I never thought I would have in college like sculpture and environmental studies. These have made me recognize I have passions beyond what I originally thought they were. Personally, I was worried that after college I would feel I haven't learned anything applicable to life, yet now I have applied my classes to everyday interactions I have with life. Although the liberal arts is not the preferred education system for everyone, there exists strong feelings from those who choose it. Research what type of college you think you would enjoy studying at and look into schools with that education system!
