In a recent survey of almost 4,000 American college bound high school students and their parents, The Princeton Review asked both demographic groups to name a single "dream" school. Dartmouth did not crack either one of the top 10 lists.
New York University landed the number one spot on the "dream" school list among students applying to college this year. Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania were the only Ivy League schools that failed to make students' top 10, which also included Stanford, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Parents, on the other hand, named Stanford University the school that they would most like to see their children attend and ranked NYU in the tenth spot. The parents bumped Brown University out of the top 10 and added the University of Notre Dame.
In the past, responses from parents and students were not differentiated in the dream school tally. The old format left Dartmouth in a similarly unenviable position, as the College failed to make the list in 2003 and 2004.
Many current Dartmouth students expressed disbelief at the College's failure to appear on any of the dream school lists.
"Some schools are trendier than they are good. Dartmouth is an enduring institution of excellence," Sarah Ayres '06 said.
Differentiating between the responses of students and parents entering the college process highlighted some interesting differences between the main concerns of the two groups.
Taking on major loan debt was the top concern about applying to college of only 22 percent of students, but that worry topped the list of fears about college for 36 percent of parents. This discrepancy is likely based on a disparity of information about the cost of college. While only 19 percent of surveyed parents believed that college would cost less than $50,000, 34 percent of students did not think the total bill would exceed that figure.
Stress levels also made for an interesting comparison. While parents and students agreed on total stress levels associated with the college process, with 42 percent of students and 41 percent of parents rating the stress levels as "high," the sources of stress differed greatly.
The surveyed students and parents responded to the with over 300 "dream" schools. Because of the vast array of schools mentioned, the Princeton Review chose not to publish the rankings of schools whose number of "dream" responses did not land them in the top 10.
The numbers began going "all over the place" deeper into the list, said Jeanne Krier of the Princeton Review.
