All students take away unique impressions of their graduating class, but numbers, as the adage goes, never lie. Fortunately, the statistics for '04s paint a picture of an academically bright and diverse class.
In 2000, Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg called the '04s "a really strong group academically." One-quarter of the class entered as valedictorians of their high schools. The class entered with an average verbal score of 708 and an average math score of 713.
The top five majors for the class were, in no particular order, economics, government, history, English and psychology and brain sciences. This distribution of majors is typical for a graduating Dartmouth class.
But the '04s were diverse in other ways. The class includes a mime, a flamenco dancer, a student who founded a pet funeral service and another who grew up raising hogs.
At the time of matriculation, the class had highest percentage of international students, at 6.2 percent. The student body also drew its members from 850 different high schools -- an unusually high number.
While the College drew from a wide range of schools, those that continually boast the highest number of students at the College, such as the Stuyvesant High School in New York City, maintained their numerical advantage in the Class of 2004.
The class sported a small gender imbalance, as there were approximately 60 more male '04s than females -- no wonder some parties were described as so-called "sausage-fests."
When the Class of 2004 matriculated in 2000 they were the first class to choose PCs over Macs. Approximately 60 percent of the class chose to buy Windows machines, while only 40 percent chose to purchase a Macintosh.
