Road Trip “Aha Moments” at Dartmouth College

Let me share with you some “aha moments” from my April 2015 college road trip to nine schools in the Northeast. Here you go… Dartmouth College – Aha!

The D-Plan is Dartmouth’s key differentiator, if you take advantage of it.

According to Dartmouth’s D-Plan students must be on campus for their first three semesters, their last three semesters and the summer after their sophomore year.  The rest of the time, it is really up to them! If students take advantage of D-Plan, they can be off campus either studying abroad or doing internships during the winter months when there is little competition and much attention from employers.  The opportunity to engage in the world, to explore your interests, to become deeply involved in what you care about is made “easy” through the D-Plan and plentiful study abroad programs – either language immersion and English language based. Three student described experiences shared at an admitted students program were each unique and remarkable.  Outside of the programming, a student who is a varsity athlete and who just declared Engineering as her major has not left campus after two years.  Over 60% of students study abroad, 30% do it twice, and 10% do it three times. Because of the D-Plan, Dartmouth boasts more internships than any other Ivy.  For a varsity athlete engineer carving out time off-campus can be challenging -- D-Plan and study abroad is what you choose to make of it.

Other points of note at Dartmouth:  Three grad schools – Medicine, Business (Tuck), and Engineering (Thayer) provide plenty of opportunity to do research.  Also, the med school has a program students can apply to their junior year.  If accepted they go straight into Med School without taking the MCATs.

Consider Dartmouth if real world experience is critical to your idea of education.