In addition to a 19-percent increase in overall applicants to the Class of 2015, the College saw a 27-percent rise in minority applicants and a 24-percent rise in international applicants this year, according to Director of Admissions Outreach James Washington. The increases reaffirm the Admissions Office's efforts to recruit minority and international students, Washington said.
"A lot of the growth in our pool is from international and students of color," Washington said. "It means our outreach efforts are producing results."
Washington said that the proportion of minority students who need financial aid is typically larger than that of non-minority students, although he said specific statistics were not available.
Dartmouth's generous financial aid packages allow the College to attract a diverse set of top students regardless of income level, according to Donald Fraser, the director of education for the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
"Only a handful of schools have the ability, the way Dartmouth does, to fund students with high need," Fraser said.
Dartmouth's "sticker price," which makes it the second most expensive Ivy League school after Columbia University, may make low-income students reluctant to apply, Fraser said. As a result, the Admissions Office must assure applicants that the College has a substantial financial aid budget, he added.
The College's recent termination of its no-loan policy for students whose families earn over $75,000 is a legitimate cause for concern among middle-class families applying for financial aid, Fraser said.
"Middle-class students are saying, Can I afford to go to Dartmouth?'" Fraser said. "Those folks are really having to struggle to make that decision."
Washington said he is concerned that the lack of merit scholarships at Ivy League schools may deter students who are eligible for partial need-based financial aid. Those students must choose between another school's offer of merit aid in addition to need-based aid and an Ivy League school's offer of only need-based aid, he said.
Ivy League institutions do not offer merit scholarships due to a strong belief that their financial aid budgets should be used to expand opportunities based on need, Washington said.
"Our sense of fairness and equity is to make affordable college education to those who have less assets," Washington said.
Although international students are unable to attend Dimensions weekend, the Admissions Office still reaches out to accepted international students, according to Senior Associate Director of Admissions Becky Munsterer.
"International students are included in all the communications with admitted students," Munsterer said. "That's huge for the yield component."
Every April, international students at the College hold a "blitzathon" in which they contact admitted students from their home countries or high schools and encourage them to enroll at Dartmouth, Munsterer said.
Online video chats have become a particularly effective way for the Admissions Office to address international students' questions, Washington said. Such forums allow students to voice their individual concerns and questions, an opportunity usually reserved for campus visits, he said.
Tom Parker, the dean of admission and financial aid at Amherst College, said that the increased pressure on selective colleges to have a diverse student body has led admissions offices to think more carefully about the high schools they visit during recruitment.
"When our admissions officers go to New York, they don't just visit private schools," Parker said.
Despite many top schools' decisions to trim their financial aid budgets in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, Amherst avoided such cuts a feat that Parker attributed to Amherst President Anthony Marx's unwavering commitment to inclusivity allowing them to continue active recruitment through measures such as providing transportation to campus for minority students who might otherwise be unable to visit, according to Parker.
