To the Editor:
Co-incidentally I was about to write The Dartmouth about a number of admissions related issues when I saw your article about interest in Dartmouth waning, and I wanted to reassure you that the very qualities that you all hold so dear at Dartmouth, are in fact the qualities that make it less acceptable to the overachieving success-driven income-minded high-schoolers who are out there.
I'll explain. Dartmouth is a small Ivy, parental, caring, moral, conscientious, residential. It is not only your academics that qualify you for Dartmouth. You must be a good human being, you must be a good kid, and on top of that, you must be a "kid," not a success-driven young adult, bored stiff with the process of education, waiting simply to get out with your ivy degree and become an investment banker.
As a close-knit residential community, you put a great deal of trust in each other to be honest, kind, fairminded, generous, or else the college couldn't function. Here at Cornell where I am, it's a dog eat dog world, both among the students, as well as the faculty -- yes, they have world famous faculty, but do they teach? No. And if they do teach, do they teach with inspiration and humility, no. They spend all their time maneuvering for tenure, writing redundant scholarly articles so they seize financially lucrative named professorships, and travelling to symposia.
The students hit the campus manipulating their schedules so they can take courses, get to know well-placed professors, so that they can get into the grad programs they have already chosen. Undergraduate love of learning, knowledge to grow, to enlighten, to help form a fine human being, has been pushed aside here.
Sounds familiar? Absolutely not. You mistakenly criticize yourselves, and think you're too competitive, or lazy, or that you drink too much, but I am telling you, and I know this from experience, you are fine kids, doing well.
Dartmouth is more than grades -- it is a process, a process of exposure to the finer things in life -- your elegant architecture, your serene environment, your down to earth classy professors. This stuff rubs off on you, you don't know it exactly, but it does, and you grow fine and look back on it and know something wonderful has happened.
You are permitted to take it slow, stay young, avoid responsibility. You are permitted to fail, wander, test new waters. Yet in the end you are held to the highest standard of all -- your own conscience, your own honest assessment of just how well you've done. You kids go to class -- seems obvious, does it? At Cornell kids don't go to class -- they choose large lectures, which are most classes, and they never go. Once again, I've noticed you uphold a moral contract with the College, and you roll out of bed and go.
I took the news of lesser interest in Dartmouth as good news. It means that kids who want to live in apartments downtown and play Nintendo while watching Survivor won't come. Dartmouth is like a big prep school -- it has rules, expectations, standards. Many kids sense the demands Dartmouth will make on them, and opt for a more 'state university' Ivy, like Cornell, Columbia or Penn, where it's only the bottom line -- your grade point average.
Raise the bar. Raise your already diligent standards. Be more choosy, not less choosy. Accept less students, reduce the class size. Raise tuition if you have to. We will pay to keep Dartmouth special.
