I have materials I want to add to my application. Will you accept them?

Some students will mail, email, or fax additional materials to the admissions office after their application has become complete. We will happily accept these materials, providing they supplement your application with NEW information.

If you have an updated transcript, a change in your application, a new award or honor, or a change in curriculum, please feel free to send that new information directly to the admissions office.

Please do not send newspaper clippings, emails, recommendations, resumes, or certificates which are repetitive. (For example, please don't send us newspaper clippings regarding your Eagle Scout project if you have already written about your Eagle Scout project in your short answer.)

Also, please refrain from sending "announcements" regarding the status of your additional material. You do not need to email us to let us know that your updated transcript is on the way.

We want to make sure we have as complete a candidacy for each applicant as possible, but we do not want to weigh down your application file with information that isn't necessary.

How many times is each application reviewed? How much time is devoted to reviewing an application?

Most applications are reviewed two or three times, with each review completed by a different member of the Admissions Committee (some applications will be reviewed more than three times - see below).

The total time spent reviewing each candidacy varies from one application to the next:

• The "first read" of an application typically takes between 10 and 20 minutes to complete, while the length of a "second read" will vary from case to case.
  
• Often, the second read of the application will take less time than the first read because the second reviewer does not have to record as many notes as the first reader.
  
• In other circumstances, a second read may take as much or more time than the first read due to the complexity of the case or due to the fact that the second reader may want to point out new issues for the Admissions Committee to consider.
• The first two reviews of a candidacy are usually comprehensive reviews of the entire application, and each reviewer takes notes summarizing the case for admission. The second reader does not look at the first reader's notes until after completing their own review of the application.
  
• Additional reviews may be by an individual reader or may involve a group (or "committee") review of the candidacy. Some candidacies will be reviewed multiple times as the selection process moves forward.
• One of my earlier blog posts explains who reads applications files.
  

Should I submit my IB Extended Essay or another research paper with my application?

Generally speaking, it would not do a lot of good for you to submit an entire IB extended essay or an additional research paper with your application. The demands of reviewing over 18,000 applications in just 10-12 weeks do not allow us the time to review lengthy supplemental materials. It is understandable that you are very proud of your work on these projects, and if you are convinced that you would not be putting your best foot forward on the application without submitting them, then you should limit yourself to submitting a one-page abstract summarizing the paper or project. A multi-page research paper or presentation will not be reviewed by the Admissions Committee or forwarded to the faculty for evaluation.

Do Admissions Officers Check A Student's Facebook/MySpace profile?

These days, we receive many questions from students regarding their online social profiles. Since anything published online is public information, technically we reserve the right to use any public internet information regarding your candidacy to make admissions decisions.
Truthfully, however, the Dartmouth Admissions Office does not actively "research" candidates online, unless there are circumstances which would validate or confirm a student's candidacy. (For example, we might confirm awards granted in a particular science fair, in order to get a sense of a student's accomplishments at the local, regional, state, or national level.) Sometimes the web can be a helpful tool in understanding the context or community of a particular applicant.

The bottom line is that it is smart to represent yourself professionally on the web. We're not trying to use the web as a "spy" tool. However, social media sites ARE a representation of yourself, and hopefully you would want to put your best foot forward.

How do you use the information we provide in the "Family" and "Demographics" parts of the Common Application?

Bio-demographic information- your family background, what your parents do, information on your school and much more- helps the Admissions Committee form a picture of each applicant's context. Context refers to the unique opportunities, resources and challenges an applicant has had in his or her life. We look at a student's goals, interests and ambitions are and how a student has taken advantage of the resources available to him or her to achieve those goals or to explore those interests. Thus, context forms the framework by which we interpret the things we see in your application.

That said, the "Family" and "Demographics" sections of the Common Application are by no means the only place we gather contextual information; we look at school profiles which tell us what kind of curriculum a student’s school offers; we read the information students provide in the "Additional Information" section about any extenuating circumstances we should take into account; we take note of the listing of part-time jobs on an application. This kind of information helps us get an idea of your day-to-day life. Keeping what we know about your context in mind, we look at each student's interests and goals. We then ask whether, given the student's circumstances, he or she has gone above and beyond in pursuing academic, intellectual, personal, and/or extracurricular opportunities that have been available. We look for evidence that a student has pushed him or herself beyond his or her circumstances.

Following on this note, I would like to take this opportunity to debunk the myth that being from a particular background, socioeconomic class, racial group, etc. confers an advantage to an applicant - this is not true. Rather, it is how an applicant has met the unique opportunities and challenges in his or her life that make a student compelling in our applicant pool.

I'm a mostly A student, but I got a C in math in 10th grade. Am I doomed?

No, you are not doomed. The errant C on a student's transcript, in and of itself, does not preclude admission (and even if it did, you would not be doomed; "doom" is a pretty strong word).

In any case, we read each student's transcript and school profile closely to determine to what extent the student has challenged him/herself given what is available and what his/her interests are. Then we look closely at how the student has performed in each subject. In the case you describe, we will seek to understand what contributed to the C grade and to see how your performance has progressed since you received this grade. These two latter points are critical to the role that this grade will play in your overall evaluation. Each year, we admit quite a few students who do not have straight A grades. As you will glean from other posts in our blogs, it is our holistic understanding of the candidacy and how it fits within the context of our applicant pool as a whole that determines the outcome. One grade in one class is but one piece that will contribute to this holistic understanding.

Can I use Score Choice for the SAT I?

Yes- Dartmouth permits the use of Score Choice. However, we encourage students to send us ALL of their scores.

Sending all scores is advantageous for many students because we will take the highest composite scores between exam sittings. For example, of a student's highest scores on the SAT math, critical reading and writing sections are spread out between multiple sittings, we will officially record the composite of those scores. However, if this particular student only sends in one sitting of the exam, we will not be able to composite score.

In some cases, we may also look at the SAT I exam in terms of a student's improvement over time. Don't worry if your score from your freshman or sophomore year is lower than your most recent score- this is to be expected! Seeing a higher score on a more recent sitting of the exam only tells us that you have grown since the last time you sat for the SAT. Keep in mind that if we only have one score on file, we will not have a basis for comparison.

Our full policy with regard to testing and details on when to request scores from the College Board can be found here.

I go to an international school where my classes are taught in Spanish. Can you read recommendations written in Spanish?

We recognize that many of our international students attend schools where English is not spoken in the classroom. If your teacher, guidance counselor, or peer writes your recommendation in a foreign language, we will ask that those recommendations be translated before they are submitted with your application.

Typically, if there is an English teacher at your school, we will ask that you have your English teacher or other English-proficient school official translate those application pieces. If you do not have access to English-speaking faculty, then you can ask a community member or relative to translate the documents. For ALL translated documents, however, we will ask that the translator sign and date the documents, so that we know they have been translated.

We also reserve the right to check for accuracy in these translations. We verify translations in various ways once the documents have been submitted.

Does the Dartmouth Admissions Office limit the number of students it takes from any school?

No.

We do not read applications by school group and we do not evaluate any application by directly comparing it to others in the school group. We take the strongest candidates who have been successful in their communities, however many or few that may be. Some years we may take every applicant from a school and the next year we may take none. We work very hard to treat every applicant as an individual with his or her own qualities, successes, and opportunities. This is consistent for all applicants--domestic and international.

How Important Are My Grades When Being Considered for Admission?

Your grade are important and are looked at in the application process in several main ways: 1) predictive ability of grades 2) grade trends 3) rigor of curriculum.

1) Many studies have been done by both Dartmouth, the College Board and our peer institutions that show that high school GPA taken into account with standardized test scores are highly correlated with how a student performs GPA-wise in his or her FIRST year in college. This means that a top GPA in high school may be an indicator that you will continue to do well in college. However, this is only part of the way we look at a student's GPA in the application process.

2) We view ALL grades as important. You should think about it this way - when we review an applicant's transcript, we look at grade trends that will help us understand a student's academic trajectory in his or her secondary school. We see transcripts that show steady grades throughout a student's high school career or a positive/upward trend from 9th-12th grade. We see transcripts where a student has bounced back from a transition or dip in grades. We also see downward trends in grades. We use the rest of the application to try to fill in WHY the trend looks the way it does. If you have a particular reason for, say, a dip in grades in your junior year, please let us know about it in the "Additional Information" section of the Common Application. Keep in mind that we will be looking to see how you have done in your most recent coursework since this will be a good indicator of how ready you are to move into a rigorous academic environment at Dartmouth.

3) The Admissions Committee will look at your curriculum and note whether the courses you have been/are taking are the most demanding offered in your school. If your school weights the GPA by counting advanced/AP/honors/IB/etc courses more heavily, we will note this (vs. an unweighted GPA where a school counts any and all courses equally when calculating the GPA). If a school does not weight your GPA, we will "weight" it ourselves when we read your file by looking on your transcript and checking with your school profile and guidance counselor recommendation to see if your coursework in fact shows that you have sought academic and intellectual challenge in your school context.

Please let me know if you have any questions about anything in this post!

Who reads my application when I apply for admission?

We do! The Admissions Committee includes 13 Admissions Officers and a small number of experienced additional application readers.

The additional application readers include people who serve in other roles at the College, former full-time Dartmouth Admissions Officers, former Admissions Officers from other colleges who now live near Dartmouth and know the selection process and the College well, and other educators who have worked as teachers, deans, high school counselors and who understand Dartmouth's values.

Dartmouth does not "assign" a specific Admissions Officer or application reader to read all of the applications from one high school, city, state or region. Particular admissions officers may be more familiar with certain areas of the world and as a result may serve as a resource for other application readers, answering questions and perhaps reviewing cases from a specific school or a given area. Most applications are reviewed several times, by multiple application reviewers.

Should I have two teachers from different subjects write my recommendations?

Not necessarily. The most important ingredient for a credible and meaningful recommendation, in my experience, is a teacher who knows his/her student well. You may find that the two teachers who know you best teach in the same subject area, or you may find they teach in different subject areas. Either way, it is fine with us. We will trust you to be the best judge of which teachers will be best able to support your candidacy.

Does Dartmouth have a cap on Early Decision Admits?

No. That said, the Admissions Office typically admits about 35% of the entering class through the Early process. We want to make sure that there are ample opportunities for both our Early Decision applicants and our Regular Decision applicants and we have found over the years that the ~35% range allows us to respond favorably to a strong cohort of our ED applicants without infringing on the opportunities of our Regular applicants.

Will I get "credit" for visiting Dartmouth?

No. Dartmouth does not track visits or other contacts for selection purposes. We do, for example, like to know who has visited campus and participated in our programming so we can make sure we're scheduling events appropriately and so we can assess the usefulness of our programming for recruitment purposes. We do not, however, include this information in students' application files. I think visiting our campus is the best way to learn about Dartmouth and to see if it is a good fit for you, but it does not make sense for students to visit as a means of demonstrating interest in attending.

What qualities are you looking for in an application?

Academic ability, intellectual curiosity, creativity, leadership, passion, compassion, talents (athletic, artistic, and any others), self-reflection, awareness of others, sense of humor, integrity, motivation, and any other positive qualities that suggest the applicant will add significantly to the Dartmouth community.

There's no formula for admission. The admissions committee takes great care to understand the full person behind the application, including the applicant's strengths and weaknesses and what she or he will add to Dartmouth.

How do you evaluate music/art supplements?

It is not too often that the Admissions Officers who read your file will see your art supplement directly*. In our Office, we forward your CDs, portfolios, videos and photos to our arts faculty who assess your work and then send us back their evaluations. We take these evaluations into account when reading the rest of your application. An art/music/debate/etc. talent with top marks from our faculty members can be a compelling part of an applicant's candidacy, as is the case with any other form of outstanding extracurricular achievement.

*I do watch many of the YouTube links that you include though! I've listened to your a capella leads and trumpet solos, I've seen you on the ice landing a triple axle, I've watched the video productions filmed in your school hallways and your creative animations. These were a nice breather for me last winter during days when the Admissions team would spend 8-10 hours a day reading files! You guys are great - keep up the good work.