How to Write the Dartmouth College Essays

The key to answering this question is research: spend time perusing your intended major’s department page on the Dartmouth website. Which resources or extracurricular programs interest you? Are there generous research or study abroad opportunities? An eminent professor whose work you’ve examined in school already? A state of the art facility? Specificity is key when writing this essay! Feel free to include details specific to campus and community life to show you’ve taken the time to envision yourself on campus. It’s only 100 words, so it’s important to make use of the little space provided.

When imagining Dartmouth, I think of “firsts.” Before the academic term, I will witness the Upper Valley’s beauty while bonding with the staggering 90 percent of my class who attend First-Year Trips. I will meet aspiring presidential candidates flocking to New Hampshire every four years to plead their cases to constituents voting in the first-in-the-nation primary. To make my own impact in politics, I can pursue the First-Year Fellows program to intern on Capitol Hill. From Dartmouth opportunities like its unique undergraduate public policy school to its setting in bucolic Hanover, there’s no better place to experience my collegiate “firsts.”

What values are the most important to you and how do you live by them? What are your defining qualities? What makes you stand out from your peers? In drafting your response here, make yourself shine by either telling Dartmouth about your unique upbringing (the people, the place, or the things you grew up with) or by sharing your eccentricity and writing about the idiosyncrasies that make you unique. The admissions committee wants to see how well you can reflect on both yourself and how you operate in the world around you, so taking the time to reflect on your answers to these guiding questions will help you demonstrate your self-awareness and confidence in who you are and what matters to you.

Hearing the train’s horn signal its impending departure, I scramble down the seemingly infinite linoleum stairs of the Tokyo Metro in a vain attempt to reach the train in time. I notice no one left on the platform shared in my struggle to hurriedly board the train before it left, instead patiently awaiting the next train. During the wait, I feel like a mannequin being analyzed by window shoppers while talking on the phone to my parents — another subway faux pas. As I’m stared down like the new kid in a first-grade class, I realize my six-foot, two-inch stature is also contributing to me looking like a circus attraction.

Having lived as an expatriate, I understand how it can feel to be an outsider (or gaijin, as the Japanese say) in a relatively uniform society. Unwritten rules passed down for generations dictate the terms of engagement, and late arrivers almost never receive a full orientation. Some customs don’t even seem fair—at my boarding school, a proctor wearing pastel chinos told me to change out of my T.J. Maxx cargo shorts because he would not be “caught dead wearing” them. My experiences as a cultural outsider have forged my desire to always recognize and extend a helping hand to the neophytes around me. As a proctor myself now, I constantly check in with my new floormates to ensure their questions are being answered and they feel just as much a part of the school community as the next student.

Given its intentionally broad scope, you should think of this prompt as a backup if none of the others speak to you. That being said, ensure your deep passion for your topic of choice shines through if you choose to answer this prompt. Feel free to interpret the prompt liberally; you could write about an idea, a subject, a natural phenomenon, a person, a book, a historical movement…anything really! Get creative and try to convey your unique personality.

Huerta’s quote calls for individuals to consider the big picture, and accordingly, students responding to this prompt should aim to clarify how they plan to make a difference in the world. As part of their response, students should clarify how a Dartmouth education (and therefore Dartmouth values) will provide the foundation needed to make this impact. This explanation need not, and frankly should not, be purely theoretical—you should offer examples of your current pursuits that demonstrate your commitment to this impact area. Make clear to the admissions committee that you are a student who practices what you preach!

This prompt invites nearly any topic as a response, as long as it celebrates your sense of wonder. A good idea would be to write about your intellectual or academic curiosity to help admissions officers anticipate your potential major and how you would contribute to the campus culture and classroom. If you take this route, the area of study should: a) be one you can see yourself enjoying and excelling at; and b) be one you have experience in that you can draw upon in your essay. Don’t feel the need to limit yourself to non-intellectual curiosities: time spent within nature or games concocted with your little sister could also highlight aspects of your character that would make your application to Dartmouth compelling. The biggest key: don’t hold back on enthusiasm!

Similar to prompt A, we at Command call this a “Nerd Out” prompt. Simply put, Dartmouth should read your response and be able to tell how passionately you care about a certain topic, subject, or other intellectual pursuit. Whether a research interest or a hobby that you’ve dedicated hours to, your love for this endeavor should be dripping down the page. A successful essay would likely also demonstrate how you’ve pursued this interest in your own life and maybe how you would even continue to do so on campus at Dartmouth.

I want to be a fortune teller.

No, I do not need a crystal ball; my computer will suffice. Nonetheless, I want the ability to forecast impending events that others might not foresee. Dartmouth’s Quantitative Social Sciences major excites me in its ability to prepare me to make such predictions. By combining theories of social science disciplines like economics or sociology with an analytic lens, I believe this unique Dartmouth program could uniquely help me to quantify the seemingly unquantifiable.

In high school, I worked with my economics teacher to develop an independent study in econometrics where I attempt to predict the unpredictable. While my project is specifically about discovering the determinants of success in the Major League Baseball playoffs, what it really seeks to understand is how to better measure labor performance — in this case, that of professional athletes — which may be overlooked. Sports, specifically baseball, are a terrific sampling ground for labor analysis, and prejudice regarding labor. In baseball, scouts historically value simplistic factors like the win-loss records or 40-yard dash times of players; however, the Moneyball revolution helped teams to discover that there are players who struggle in traditional aspects of evaluation but possess undetected, often incredible, traits with their own inherent value. By studying QSS at Dartmouth, I hope to develop the analytical capabilities that would allow me to eschew orthodoxy in favor of identifying the “diamonds in the rough” using data-driven approaches.

All students are unique, but many students exist in spaces where they are in the minority due to some characteristic difference that is plainly evident or even imperceptible. This essay offers the space for students to not only share those differences but also explain how their lived experiences with those differences has led them to be the person they are today and the person they will be on their future college campus.

Dartmouth attracts thousands of students from all over the world to its campus and accepts the most promising students, and in this essay, their question to you is quite direct: what qualifies you to be considered in that same echelon of their candidate pool? Note that they mention “learning” and “leadership” – your response should shed insight into not only how you are a promising candidate for your intellectual vitality but also how you would be a powerful and positive influence on others on campus and beyond.