This article is featured in the 2025 Freshman Special Issue.
You’ve made it. College at last. In high school you likely accumulated accolades, got great grades and studied hard for the SAT. Now, you’re at Dartmouth and ready to begin a new chapter of your life.
However, too often, new college students remain stuck in college application mode — racing after leadership positions, brown-nosing every professor, competing for every award, among other behaviors. We — with a few years of experience at Dartmouth under our belts — are here to tell you to snap out of it.
It is a fact that the admissions processes for elite universities are increasingly competitive, and can often feel as though they were set up to exclude those not in the top 1% of the top 1% of talent. As a result, high school can often feel painfully cut-throat, as students are pitted against one another to get the highest grade point average in their class and secure the leadership of the most prestigious student organizations — and unfortunately, it is very difficult for many to get into a top university without this sort of approach.
As a result, the urge to continue with a cut-throat “clout chasing” approach to college can be strong. Many Dartmouth students chase after leadership positions in the biggest campus clubs, stress about getting into the best Greek house in the hopes of better networking opportunities, obsessively pick easy classes in order to keep their GPA up and otherwise exert themselves to build the most prestigious resumes. After all, there are countless graduate programs, internships and consulting jobs to compete for after graduation, and these positions are difficult to land. Especially in fields like law and politics, there is no doubt that there is considerable pressure to over-perform in college.
This is the wrong way to approach your time at Dartmouth. Leave the clout chasing behind.
College is different from high school. Yes, there are internships to worry about, graduate programs to keep in mind, and high-paying, entry-level jobs on Wall Street to thirst after, but none of these require the same sort of resume-building that may have defined your high school experience. In the vast majority of cases, employers are only going to care about the professional skill set you will bring to their team; studies show that superfluous extracurriculars and awards on the basis of academic achievement matter less and less in today’s competitive job market.
This doesn’t mean that extracurriculars are pointless. Rather, we argue that you should approach them as an opportunity to build yourself as a person, to better understand what interests you and what things you enjoy before you go off into the real world. The best metric is that if you’re not having a hearty laugh and a large smile at least a few times in a club meeting, it probably isn’t for you. There are hundreds of different ways to explore your interests at Dartmouth, so go off the beaten track and find what truly strikes a chord with you.
We recognize that some fields require at least some sort of clout chasing — government and finance come to mind — but even then, we urge you to not treat it as a repeat of high school. There is nothing wrong with pursuing an extracurricular because you think it will help you on your career path — but make sure that path is in the direction you want to go in the first place. If an activity looks good on your resume but holds no interest for you, you should be reflecting more deeply on whether this is the right career path for you.
In your short four years at college, accolade-stacking in itself should not be the goal, but instead genuine and deep-seated personal growth — for the sake of both your professional and personal development. Forgo activities that do not enrich your life and embrace those that are truly character building. Treat college like the novel experience that it is. Approach it as a clean slate and do away with the cut-throat high school approach. It won’t do you any good here.
Have fun and enjoy yourself. Welcome to Dartmouth!
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Luke Montalbano ’27 is an opinion editor and writer. He is from Vancouver, Canada and is majoring in Government and minoring in History. On campus, Luke is a Dickey Center War and Peace Fellow, the Co-President of the Federalist Society of Dartmouth, the President of the American Conservation Coalition of Dartmouth and President of the John Quincy Adams Society.
Ramsey Alsheikh is an opinion editor, staff columnist, cartoonist, and aspiring jack-of-all trades. He is currently double majoring in Computer Science and Middle Eastern Studies modified with Jewish Studies.
