Twenty-three years after Dartmouth became coeducational, the Class of 1999 could become the first class to have complete parity between the sexes.
Though numbers are not finalized, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg said currently 50.1 percent of the class is male and 49.9 percent is female. There currently are 527 men and 525 women in the class.
The number of female students has grown consistently over the last three years, increasing from 44.8 percent for the Class of 1996 to a record-high 48.2 percent for the Class of 1998.
Furstenberg said there are about 30 students who have not decided whether to enroll in Dartmouth. There also are 600 students on the waitlist for the Class of 1999. The College usually takes students off the waitlist to compensate for students who decide to defer their admission a year.
This year, Dartmouth received 10,006 applications and from those who applied, 2,210 were admitted.
Furstenberg attributes the growing number of female students who decide to come to Dartmouth to the visibility of many women groups on campus including the Women in Science Program, the number of women faculty at the College, and the prominence of women sports teams.
Other than the number of female students, the Class of 1999 will be similar to the Class of 1998. The Scholastic Achievement Test verbal mean for the enrolled Class of 1999 is 636, a one-point increase over last year's mean of 635, and the math mean jumped nine points from 693 to 702.
The number of valedictorians admitted to the Class of 1999 increased to 28 percent from 26.8 percent last year. Salutatorians comprise 13 percent of the enrolled applicants, a large growth from last year's 9.4 percent.
The number of minority students decreased marginally from last year. The biggest drop was African-American students, which decreased to 67 from 79.
The number of enrolled Latino students increased to 55 from 48, while the number of Asian-American and Native-American students both dropped by one.
According to statistics from the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid, applications to the College have increased each of the past five years, with this year's number showing a 4.8 percent increase from last year.
