Hi! My name is Jack and I am a Sophomore at Dartmouth. I currently plan to major in sociology modified with anthropology, all with a human-centered design minor. Outside of class, I enjoy performing and I'm currently involved in both a student dance group and acapella. I love hiking and running outdoors and have already explored a lot of Dartmouth's surrounding trails. I am also involved in Greek Life, the Student and Presidential Committee for Sexual Assault, and the Inter Fraternity Council.
Hey everybody! After a brief return home from Boston and a spring break that felt much shorter than it was, I am beyond excited to be writing to you all from my dorm room in Hanover! While I'm in a new room on the other side of campus from the one I was in fall term, it feels great to be back and I can't wait for what this term has to offer. However, there is definitely something more exciting and probably stressful for the high school seniors reading this right now: decision time! Everyone has their own experiences and I can only speak for myself, but I thought I'd do my best to explain to you all why I personally chose Dartmouth a year ago.
I got into Dartmouth Regular Decision and had an extremely challenging decision to make in the spring of 2020. To make matters worse, COVID had just shut down all in-person admitted student events, and I was forced to decide based on the information I was able to obtain from my computer. However, the virtual programming allowed me to discover that Dartmouth was the right fit for me.
I attended virtual events for admitted students at numerous schools, desperately hoping to understand the experiences and lives of students at the colleges. I yearned for virtual tours to transport me to campus, for panels to illuminate how I'd feel attending a university, but no virtual event came close to helping me understand the overall atmosphere or 'vibe' of the colleges I chose between. Except for Dartmouth.
Dartmouth's virtual admitted student programming convinced me to attend because I felt as if it was the only school that had such an emphasis on community that I was able to discern what the school's atmosphere was like through remote and virtual events. The Dimensions show for admitted students was a zany Zoom video, with students dressed in flair (weird, crazy costumes); I talked to current students (all very friendly) and heard about their experiences, all of which were positive. Dartmouth did for me what no other school could: it communicated the on-campus experience through virtual events. At the end of the day, I knew that between the schools I was considering, they all offered superb academic, artistic, extracurricular, and professional opportunities, and the deciding factor was simply if I thought I'd get along with my fellow classmates and simply feel like I belong on campus. While I still haven't experienced the true Dartmouth lifestyle, the past year has been better than I could have imagined in multiple ways, and I'm extremely glad I made the decision that I did.
Good luck to everyone, and I hope to see some of you all on campus next year!
Three years ago today, I received an email that would shape my entire Dartmouth experience in a way I never could have predicted. It's funny to think that it all started because I was a prospective student obsessively reading this very blog.
The River Cluster (the group of residence halls closest to the Connecticut River, including French and Judge Hall) has a reputation…and some of it is warranted. But there's more to living in the River than you might expect!
