Dartmouth College Top Questions

There is a bit of everything here at Dartmouth. All races, ethnicities, socio-economic, geographic backgrounds are represented here, usually in your immediate group of friends too. The student body is very accepting, and finding one's social niche is pretty easy.

Most people are friendly. Everybody is beautiful. The people really are accepting of all backgrounds, and although here and there you will find self-segregation and racism...where do you NOT find it??? Dartmouth is a helpful place and a nice place to find something for you.

Students are pretty relaxed on campus. I've gone to class wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt and no one said anything. In fact, such attire is pretty common for morning classes. Students are accepting of people from all types of backgrounds. Less than half of the student body receives any type of financial aid so a large portion of Dartmouth students come from families that are well off, however, students typically do not discuss their financial situation with others. Students are very much politically active and during election time, it can get hectic. Dartmouth has a reputation as being the most conservative Ivy, but I don't think this is true. Though the conservative groups on campus are very vocal, they are small groups and represent a minority of the student body's opinion.

I think that Dartmouth as a whole is a generally accepting place and there are no major racial or other issues. There are definitely wealthy people that go here but because most people just wear extremely casual clothes to class, wealth is not made extremely obvious. I think that Dartmouth is a pretty liberal campus like most colleges. There are some students who do talk about how much they are going to earn, but i would say that is a small number of people.

Dartmouth students are from all over, but there are a lot from the Northeast (New England, NYC). Students wear a variety of things to class- usually jeans and hoodies, especially in winter, when warmth is more important than fashion. Towards late spring/early fall people make more of an effort to dress cute. Athletes make up a large proportion of the student body.

I think the type of student who would feel most out of place at Dartmouth might be described as follows: the socially adept, frat-hating, non-drinker. There are many social people here, and many people who abstain from drinking and stay away from frats, but I think its probably hard for people who fall into both of these categories to find others like them. But maybe I'm wrong.

I think the closed-minded (AND one who is unwilling to open their mind) student would feel out of place at Dartmouth. Dartmouth is fabulous because the student body has such diverse backgrounds and genuinely love engaging with other students to learn more about their experiences. Most students are also athletes because we are a smaller sized school, yet still Division 1. If students aren't athletes, most love being active in some outdoor/indoor physical activity.

i would think that it would be hard for a person who does not have a lot of money to fit in as there are always a lot of things that you randomly have to pay for here. it seems that there are a lot of very wealthy kids here. i would definitely say, though, that students of all kind of backgrounds interact. however, sometimes you will see the typical 'asian' table and 'black' table. Those would be two of the four tables. the other two i would say would be filled with athletes from a team and then a group of girls. there is not much talk about life after college. the students are politically active.

Dartmouth is so diverse that I think any kind of student would feel comfortable at Dartmouth. Most students wear either jeans or sweats to class. Everyone interacts with everyone; there are the different 'groups' or 'stereotypes' of people but people go beyond those superficial walls and make friends with all different kinds of people that they otherwise probably wouldn't have talked to.

Dartmouth is an incredibly diverse school. Very rarely will you see groups of friends that are purely homogeneous. There are lots of racial minorities (esp. Native Americans) as well as people of varying sexual orientation and gender identity. In addition, there is a huge amount of political diversity and financial diversity as well. Granted, there are a good amount of rich students, but these amount to only about half of the school’s population. Being a gay student, I can say that my experience has been very positive. Not once have I dealt with blatant discrimination or harassment. I have only encountered tolerance, and very often acceptance, from my peers. My only problem is that a lot of other LGBT students don’t feel the same way. I feel like sometimes Dartmouth breeds a large amount of semi-closeted LGBT students because of the (slightly) intimidating Greek scene. Not to say there isn’t a substantial amount of out LGBT students here; they just aren’t all extremely vocal. Overall, Dartmouth is a very open-minded and progressive school and the environment is overwhelmingly tolerant and accepting.