Note: All of the following questions were adapted from CollegeConfidential.com. The answers are our own.
Pedobear: Can I get in as a transfer with a 3.3 GPA?Answer: No, and get a new username.
cookiedough123: Is Dartmouth really in the middle of nowhere? My mom said it was in the middle of a cow pasture... literally. I really want to go to Dartmouth, so I'm hoping this isn't completely true!Answer: You'll come to love it. Fraternities entertain guests with their house cows named Bessie and Bubbles grazing demurely on front lawns. I get a kick out of watching them weaving slowly between littered Keystone cans and discarded 12 oz. Dixie cups on lazy Sunday mornings. Prospies frequently claim to fall for Dartmouth simply because of the 4-H mentality and the comforting odor of manure wafting across the Green. After four years of hard farm labor tending to your cow and tilling the soil to grow crops stored in group silos, generously provided by the College, you will speak fondly of your time in the cow pasture to the north. A tip: Don't screw up the harvest, or you will get hungry.
mark2457: Has the recent hazing scandal documented in The Boston Globe and soon to be detailed by Rolling Stone changed your mind about applying or attending this school?Answer: Now, it's completely your call whether or not the Rolling Stone hazing bonanza changed your mind or not, but it damn well should have occupied a serious portion of your mind space. If you didn't re-inspect and reflect for a quick minute after reading the various media exposes, put plainly, you didn't pay close attention. Still caught in the gossamer of the enduring"Animal House" legacy, Dartmouth is portrayed as the seedy collegiate underbelly of residual elite privilege. I was terrified for sure reading what Reitman, et al, wrote about the College. And to say that you didn't entertain thoughts of the reality of the situation, at the very least, well, that would just be irresponsible.
batfan: I've heard a lot about the advantages of the D-Plan, but not very much about the disadvantages. Answer: The D-Plan rends you from your friends, dashes you against the rocks and sends you at first achingly, bloodily, then joyfully to the farthest reaches of the globe. You sign yourself up for one of the European FSPs and not-so-secretly reinvent yourself as a young romantic journeying on a shoe-string Grand Tour, or you end up on that FSP to where they filmed "Lord of the Rings." I think New Zealand? For the record, I went to D.C., which was kind of a mistake location-wise. Unless your FSP experience straight up sucks and to be fair, it seems that some honestly just suck you are distracted by the beauty and comparatively microscopic social universe now revolving around you. Your friends in Hanover ebb and flow in the social tide too, drifting into new friends and expanding old circles as quickly as you hop off to Madrid for the weekend. No, things aren't the same as they were, and we don't keep the same friends for four years, but the D-Plan gives you the more valuable opportunity to break your teeth on new, surprising reshufflings every so often. It's social flexibility training like no other. Off-cycle internship benefits should go without saying. In the end, no one is immune from the destructive and constructive effects of the D-Plan. And ultimately that's good. We learn more this way, unsteady as we may feel through the process.
