The College has participated in the Freshman Survey, administered by the Higher Education Research Institute, since its inception in 1966.
The 2005 Freshman Survey data reflects information from 263,710 students across the nation at 385 different universities, revealing a meteoric rise in student commitment to volunteer work.
Over 66 percent of first-year college students said helping others was very important, the highest figure in 25 years.
John Pryor '84, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the HERI, said he attributes this steadfast commitment to volunteerism to the national disasters of the past two years, citing specifically the tsunami in Thailand and Hurricane Katrina.
Pryor said he expects these trends to continue because nearly 70 percent of college freshmen planned to continue their exemplary high school volunteerism after graduation.
"We think what we're looking at is a period effect -- something that will have a lasting effect," Pryor said. "We expect that these students will maintain this interest throughout college."
Although the College has not yet released any Dartmouth-specific data, the College historically has had volunteer rates on par with or above the national average.
The 2003 Freshman Survey revealed that the College had a greater commitment to volunteer work than the solid national average.
While 83.1 percent of freshmen across the nation reported that they volunteer, an impressive 92.6 percent of Dartmouth students said the same.
Marcia Kelly, associate dean for development and administration, said Dartmouth participates in this survey and the CIRP study because it sees the inherent value in the process.
"The CIRP gives us a wealth of data about incoming students," Kelly said. "It gives us aggregate information to compare our students nationally. Also, I'm trained as a sociologist, so I just find it fascinating to begin with because the CIRP data is so broad."
Without having analyzed the 2005 statistics on Dartmouth that she recently received, Kelly agreed with Pryor and said that the events of the past year have affected Americans significantly.
"When we look back and think about what are the major world events which mark people's awareness, I think people have begun to think differently about giving their time," Kelly said.
In addition to revealing an increased concern for civic responsibility, the 2005 Freshman Survey reported gender differences in reasons for attending college, a national decrease in support for military spending and a dip in percentages of first-years who drank alcohol in high school.
