Although significantly fewer students applied to Dartmouth this year than last year, the Student Life Initiative does not appear to be a cause of the five percent drop in application numbers. Instead, a wide range of other factors may be to blame.
In fact, none of the three high school college counselors or three high school students The Dartmouth spoke with were familiar with the SLI's proposals. They said it was not a topic they discussed with students who were considering applying to Dartmouth and thought that the decline in application numbers was part of a normal fluctuation in admissions trends.
When informed of some of the SLI's proposed changes to the Greek system and other aspects of campus life, college counselor Pat Cleary of Stuyvesant High School in New York City said, "I'm pretty sure most students [at Stuyvesant] would react positively toward that. ... One of the things that I think influences students is the emphasis on fraternities and sororities that other schools don't have."
Cleary said the students she advises tend to view the Greek system as "encouraging conformity" and "kind of WASPish. ... They would see it as not fitting in with more contemporary values."
Instead, she said the main reason some Stuyvesant students who initially consider Dartmouth may decide against attending is its remote location. Stuyvesant's students are from the city, and while Cleary said they comment on the Dartmouth campus's beauty, some decide they would be more comfortable at an urban university, she said.
Bruce Bailey, director of college counseling at the Lakeside School in Seattle and the director of its Upper School, stressed the College's image as a primary factor on which applicants make their decisions.
There are two images of Dartmouth in circulation at Lakeside, a school which he said has around 15 graduates currently at Dartmouth. The first is "the old image of the all-male, frat-based party school" which made "a difficult transition to coeducation"; the other is of an "outdoors, rough-and-ready" college in a rural location, a view which he said attracts some students and repels others.
Some Lakeside students, active in outdoor sports in the Seattle area, are looking for a Dartmouth-like environment, Bailey said, while he knows of another student whose academic record is spectacular but who is not involved in sports or outdoor activities. For that reason, "I would bet she might not go [to Dartmouth]," Bailey said.
Peter Jennings, director of college counseling at Concord Academy in Concord, Mass., has his own theory about Dartmouth's decline in applications.
First of all, he said, the application numbers at certain other Ivies are up because of their decision to admit students through a non-binding early action plan. According to Jennings, this increase has caused schools like Harvard and Brown to re-think and adopt binding early decision plans instead.
Another factor, Jennings said, is that "kids are very hot right now on urban schools." He described a trend among middle-aged adults, mirrored by a pattern among prospective college students, of renewed interest in big cities and the range of opportunities they offer.
Many students at Concord value the outdoors, he said, but added, "whereas schools like this used to regularly send a large number of kids to rural schools, now many are being attracted to urban ones instead."
Israel Matos, a junior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., echoed Jennings' observation.
"A lot of [a college's] character has to do with location, and Dartmouth is really out there in the middle of nowhere," he said. "You're also there for the area, not only for the buildings of your school."
At other colleges he has visited, Matos said, "there wasn't that isolatedness" Dartmouth's location creates. "If you go to Dartmouth, the only thing you can be offered is what's at Dartmouth. If you go to, let's say, Georgetown in D.C., say you're into politics, you come out of there with a ton of connections."
Asked how Andover students would describe Dartmouth, Matos summed it up in a word: "Prestigious. Because it's in the Ivy League; that's all that really matters, right? You come out with a name. It's all that really matters. It's all brand names. Like if you wear a Tommy Hilfiger shirt, that tells you you look good. The name Harvard or Dartmouth tells [employers] you're good."
Jessica Blum, a senior at Concord who applied to nine universities including Dartmouth, Brown, Harvard and Yale, initially saw many things to like about Dartmouth. She even considered applying early decision.
The College's programs in dance and horseback riding, two of her areas of interest, are strong. "I love the campus -- it's so beautiful -- and I love the school itself."
But Blum said that from conversations with her brother, a Dartmouth student, she is now leaning away from Dartmouth.
"If you are not in one of the cool sports teams, then you will not have a life," she said. "And the social life completely revolves around drinking."
Blum said if she attends another university, she probably will not join a sorority -- but if she attended Dartmouth, she said she would be more likely to. "I wouldn't feel like I had to as much elsewhere," she said.
Both Harvard and Yale, among her top choices, have a system of residential colleges which she says foster a sense of community. That's something she says she would lack at Dartmouth without joining a sorority -- which she said she doesn't want to do because "I wouldn't want that to be my college career."
Blum said students at Concord generally view Dartmouth as "a conservative, preppy, jock school. ... There are elements of that I do see. And [wherever I end up going] is going to be my school for four years."
When one high school junior, who preferred to remain anonymous, visited Dartmouth, his admissions host took him to a fraternity. What he saw was "what I expected of a fraternity: a lot of drinking, a social center of the campus."
Other than fraternities, there was "a lot of chilling. There isn't that much else to do. That's the side I saw when I visited."
Despite that, he said, students at Dartmouth seemed to be free to determine their own involvement with the Greek system and with drinking. "There [are] a lot of places to just hang out, lounges, places to get a bite to eat. You aren't necessarily affected [by the Greek system]."
"This may be a momentary glitch," Lakeside's Bailey said. "I think you've got to look at it historically. [Due to] the rural nature of Dartmouth, for significant numbers of people, especially minorities, that's not their thing."
For students in cities, Dartmouth is "a different world, and it's already a big change going away to college," he said.
