Each year, getting into a college like Dartmouth becomes harder. Alumni who graduated decades ago laugh at the likelihood that they could be accepted to today's Dartmouth, just as current undergraduates repress memories of the efforts and energies they expended to get in two or three years ago.
As Dartmouth watches its own admissions statistics sky-rocket -- applications for the Class of 2012 increased by 11 percent, and that was before the new financial aid policy was unveiled -- the College is part of a larger trend in higher education admissions. There is no loosening of the admissions belt in sight, however, as 2009 boasts the largest number of 18-year olds in American history -- 3.2 million. The size of 2009's applicant pool coupled with more aggressive recruiting out-reach, generous financial aid packages and the increasing facility of filing one's applications online spell an important opportunity and a daunting responsibility for Dean Maria Laskaris '84 and her team in McNutt Hall.
Preserving the character of Dartmouth's student body -- the very foundation of the Dartmouth experience and College culture -- begins with admissions. While this character cannot be described with just a few adjectives, think of any scene from a Dartmouth students' life -- DOC trips, the Homecoming bonfire, or just any classroom -- and consider how much the character of the individuals around you informs that experience.
Dartmouth has consistently fielded a class of freshmen to uphold this legacy by relying on the personality-centered aspects of our application, valuing essays and recommendations -- especially the recommendation Dartmouth requires from applicants' peers -- above other, more objective instruments like SAT scores and grade point averages. With the wild increases in College applications, however, the worry is that applicants will earn their acceptance letters with test scores, course loads, grade point averages and other application gray matter more and more.
Despite daunting towers of applicant files in the Admissions Office, Dartmouth needs to stick to its guns. Admissions at the College should stay focused on the applicants as people, knowing that within this year's 15,593 applications there may be plenty of students who will be able to manage Dartmouth academically, but fewer whose character is congruent with the Dartmouth experience.
While peer recommendations and informal undergraduate-led information sessions are essential to finding the right applicants for Dartmouth, Laskaris is faced with reconciling the tenets of Dartmouth's unique, tight-knit community with the inevitable impersonality of judging such a volume of applications. For now, we will have to wait for Dimensions weekend to see who can get into Dartmouth these days anyway.
