There is a glaring flaw in the college admissions process. When admissions officers read the applications of thousands of high schoolers from around the country, they assume that each students' activities, recommendations and grades speak volumes about who that person will be once he or she is in college. What they fail to take into account, however, is that once a student decides to enroll at Dartmouth, he or she can suddenly become whoever they want to be.
Going to college away from home presents students with an opportunity that they probably won't have at another point in life the chance to essentially start over. If you decide to reinvent yourself sometime in between graduation and the first day of your DOC First-Year Trips, who would ever know? Dartmouth students vary in the degree to which they chose to embrace or not embrace the blank slate presented by beginning college.
Hayley Lynch '15 said she has changed very much since graduating from high school a year ago. Before coming to college, she imagined that at Dartmouth, she would be "in a community of people who really care about their work and want to learn people would be on more equal footing and less cliquey."
Perhaps most importantly, she thought that "it would be more easygoing than high school drama."
For the most part, Dartmouth has lived up to Lynch's expectations in terms of providing a more dynamic community. However, she added that while she is in many ways the same person she was a year ago, she also feels more relaxed at Dartmouth than at home.
"I'm probably more outgoing here because I feel more comfortable," she said. "There are no labels about being the smart one' because everyone is [smart], which is an incredibly nice change."
Michael Matt '13 said she has also emerged from his shell since beginning college.
"I'd say the biggest change for me is that I'm more confident and sociable than I was in high school," he said.
In general, most Dartmouth students were probably incredibly focused on academic and extracurricular success in high school. It isn't uncommon to hear that a person who enjoys going out a few times a week here rarely had the time for a lot of social activities before college.
"I think I'm definitely more social," Mason Cole '13 said. "I hang out more than I did in high school."
Perhaps the most common change that Dartmouth students undergo is a shift in academic interests. Having an inspiring professor or discovering a new angle for learning about something can dramatically alter perspectives and passions.
"My academic interests have changed a little bit," Phoebe Bodurtha '15 said. "I came to Dartmouth thinking I was interested in government, but I have also discovered a love for Arabic, which is interesting because in high school I hated language classes."
Richard D'Amato '13 also said his academic perspective has changed since graduating from high school.
"I'm a little more focused than I was before," he said. "I came to college having no clue what I wanted to do, and I still have no clue what I want to do, but my academic and professional interests have definitely narrowed."
Bodurtha attributed her change in perspective to the fact that Dartmouth students take substantially fewer classes per term than the average high school senior.
"I find myself doing work because I care about it because if I'm only taking three classes a term, I want to get a lot out of them," she said. "I was spread too thin in high school."
Outside of the realm of academics, Jenna Vickers '14 said she experienced another commonly noted change the exposure to new people and ideas.
"I expected college academics to be hard, and I was right," she said. "What I didn't expect was the variety of people that I've met."
Having attended a tiny high school with a graduating class of only 14, Vickers said Dartmouth has been a different environment for her, yet maintained that she has not deviated much from her pre-college personality. While Vickers might not see a change in herself, she said she has noticed a change in the variety of people with whom she interacts.
"At home, we were all athletes, so that was all we talked about and all we did," she said. "Here, my friends are involved in everything. One of my friends here is a vegan I wouldn't have expected that."
Rather than wiping the slate clean, college seems to present an opportunity for high school students to grow up. At Dartmouth, the steadiness of our personalities and passions could be reflective of the fact that people here generally respect and admire their peers for whoever they are. You might acquire a new nickname, drop an old habit, or pick up a new activity, but the odds are you probably want to hold on to the essence of whatever it is that got you here in the first place.
Perhaps there is something to be said for the methodology that goes on in McNutt. Maybe all of us really were that predictable. After all, it seems like the Admissions Office had our 17-year-old selves figured out better than we ever could have.
