'98 class complete
The 15 additional students who have enrolled in the Class of 1998 since the May 1 response deadline increased the percentage of minorities but did not affect the class's gender ratio.
Next year's freshman class will include 48.4 percent women, the highest ever in Dartmouth history.
The class will consist of 24.3 percent minority students, which represents nearly a 1 percent increase since the Admissions Office's reply deadline. African-American students will comprise 8 percent of the incoming class.
The are currently 1,059 students in the class and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg expects the number to remain fairly constant, he said.
On May 6, The Dartmouth reported 1,044 out of 2,153 admitted students accepted the College's invitation to matriculate and that the Admissions Office was still waiting for 300 replies.
When the College sent out acceptance letters in April, Furstenberg projected 1,060 students would matriculate.
Although the College has achieved its target level for the Class of 1998, Furstenberg said the Admissions Office plans to accept 20 to 30 students from the waitlist to balance the number of students who usually decide to defer during the summer.
"With 1,000 18-year-olds, something is bound to happen. People decide to take a year off or get sick, and the numbers are constantly changing," he said.
At Dartmouth the freshmen class will be smaller than previous classes. Furstenberg said the decrease in size is due to this year's over-enrolled freshman class and the small size of the outgoing Class of 1994.
"You can't replace a small class with a big one," he said.
Sixty-seven foreign students have enrolled in the Class of 1998. The main countries represented are the Phillipines, Hong Kong, India and Argentina.
The class will consist of 28.7 percent high school valedictorians and 9.8 percent salutatorians. The mean Scholastic Achievement Test verbal score was 634 and the mean math score was 693.
"The stats are impressive but they make it seem like that's all we care about and it goes farther than that. It's amazing to see all the things people do," Furstenberg said.
The percentages of both Native-American and Asian-American students have decreased in comparison to the Class of 1997 by several tenths of a percentage point. Native-American students will comprise 2.5 percent of the incoming class and Asian-American students will comprise 9.6 percent of the class.
Furstenberg added that community service is the most common extracurricular activity, with about 28 percent of the students participating in some type of service.
Furstenberg said that although it is cliche to tout each incoming class as the best ever at Dartmouth, statistics seems to indicate this is true.
