Dartmouth Thayer School of Engineering’s Dual-Degree Program allows students to attend two liberal arts institutions and earn two degrees in five years: a bachelor of arts from their home college and a professionally-accredited bachelor of engineering from Dartmouth. It’s an unconventional path that requires students to split their college experience between two campuses, navigate two distinct academic cultures and constantly readjust to new environments.
Roughly 20 to 30 students arrive at Dartmouth each year from partner institutions such as Colby College, Skidmore College, Amherst College and Williams College. The dual-degree program offers two timeline options: the 2-1-1-1 path, where students spend their junior year at Dartmouth, return to their home college for senior year, then return again to Thayer for a final B.E. year or the 3-2 route, where they complete three full years at their home institution before spending their final two years at Dartmouth.
For Nafis Bhuiyan ’27, a student from Colby College, the choice to apply to the dual-degree program came down to practical factors that many international students face. Although Colby partners with both Dartmouth and Columbia University, Dartmouth won out for three key reasons: financial aid availability for international students, a more flexible engineering curriculum that allows concentration changes and a schedule that fit better with Bhuiyan’s academic timeline.
“Dartmouth offers financial aid to international students for this engineering program, which is the dual degree program,” Bhuiyan explained. “At Columbia, the financial aid for international students in this program is restricted, or very limited.”
Arhum Nadeem ’27, who also attends Colby, also cited Dartmouth’s financial aid package as a major contributor to his decision.
“I looked into engineering as a potential career and looked into the Dual-Degree program,” Nadeem said. “[The] mainstream pipeline for engineering students is Dartmouth, just because Columbia is a lot [more] limited in financial aid. People that are coming to Dartmouth are already doing an extra year of college, and they do not want to pay for an even more expensive extra year. And then on top of that, New York City costs more.”
Dartmouth’s engineering program also appealed to Bhuiyan because of its “holistic” and “concentrated” nature.
“Let’s say I first intended to do mechanical, but my mind changed at some point, and I want to do electrical,” Bhuiyan said. “I have that opportunity at Dartmouth, but Columbia doesn’t have that.”
Nadeem chose the 2-1-1-1 path to be able to spend more time with his friends at Colby.
“A lot of people in our junior year back at Colby, they go abroad anyways,” he said. “If you’re going [to Dartmouth] in the senior year instead of your junior year, you’re kind of creating a bad timeline with your friends.”
For Owen Young, who is coming from Skidmore, the decision was much simpler — Dartmouth was “the only [option] that Skidmore offered for dual-degree.” But that didn’t make his choice any less intentional. He knew from the moment he applied to Skidmore that he wanted to pursue the dual-degree.
“There are so many prerequisite courses, and you have to know that you’re going to apply right as you get there,” Young explained. Still, he loved Skidmore, so leaving felt daunting.
“It feels like you have to restart that freshman fall,” he said.
Like Bhuiyan and Nadeem, Young chose the 2-1-1-1 path as well since the 3-2 would have meant missing senior year at Skidmore entirely.
“I really wanted to be able to graduate with them and have my last year with them,” Young said. “Graduating with my friends is a big deal to me.”
The Dual-Degree curriculum follows a structured path. During their first year at Dartmouth, dual-degree students tackle three “common core” courses — ENGS 21, 22 and 23 — one or two “distributive core” courses from ENGS 24-28 and one or two “gateway” courses from ENGS 30-37 that introduce specific engineering disciplines, according to Nadeem. This wide variety of classes is enticing for students.
“At Colby, every class is going to be a mix of all different kinds of skills,” Nadeem said. “At Dartmouth, all the classes have a different vibe.”
Even within engineering, Nadeem has found variation. He said that ENGS 21 was entirely project-based and self-paced, with students designing solutions to real-world problems, while ENGS 22 was “hardcore differential equations modeling, thermal systems, mechanical systems, electrical systems.”
Despite their rigor, these classes have proven to be uniquely rewarding for Bhuiyan, given that many of them deal with subject matter that isn’t offered at various home institutions. He described wanting to “make the most out of [his] Dartmouth experience.”
Young is particularly excited about taking ENGS 33: Solid Mechanics.
“Skidmore doesn’t have a CAD license or CNC machines,” he said. “Having a class that’s basically all about learning SolidWorks and mechanics sounds super cool to me.”
Transitioning from a smaller liberal arts college to Dartmouth means adjusting not only to a new campus but also to a new scale of community. Colby has about 2,100 students total — less than half of Dartmouth’s undergraduate population of roughly 4,500. Skidmore is similar in size.
“At Colby, I essentially know everyone,” Bhuiyan said. “When I go to dining halls, I can tell if there’s someone new.”
Nadeem appreciated the shift to a bigger school, and he said Dartmouth is a sweet spot in terms of class size.
“The thing with small liberal arts colleges is [that they are] for a very specific kind of person, the kind of person that loves seeing the same people on the road, in their house, in their classes every day,” he said. “Personally, I am a bigger school type of person. … [Dartmouth is] a small school compared to university standards, but you can still always meet strangers.”
Young noted that while Dartmouth’s engineering community is collaborative, the day-to-day academic experience feels more structured than at Skidmore.
“If I had a question, I could just walk down the physics hall, which is like three minutes from my dorm, and there’s a good chance that somebody that knows how to answer my question is just standing right there,” Young said.
For students coming from schools following a semester system, Dartmouth’s “fast-paced” 10-week term can be jarring, according to Bhuiyan. Young, currently enrolled in ENGS 21, 22 and 27, said that he feels it too.
“The pace is the main part,” Young said. “If it was still 13 weeks of lecture, I’m sure it would be just fine, but only having nine weeks of lecture — it’s a really, really big change from [my] home college.”
For Nadeem, however, the speed to Dartmouth terms has worked well.
“It’s definitely not more intense or harder, just because when you have a 16-week program, you’re covering a lot more content as well,” Nadeem said. “At Colby, a semester [can] become pretty dry. You’ll sort of go on autopilot. At Dartmouth, if there’s a topic inside your course that you don’t like, it’s only there for like two weeks.”
The dual-degree means that students will go through five years of undergraduate education rather than the traditional four. Bhuiyan said this extra year is valuable if it is “planned carefully.”
“I get to experience both liberal arts and engineering,” Bhuiyan said. “I hope that will help me down the road.”
Nadeem sees the extra year as breathing room.
“I’ve been dabbling in a lot of different career paths,” Nadeem said. “I have no idea what I want to do. While I’m at this stage, I appreciate that I have a buffer margin of five years before I graduate and I have to look for a job.”
Young was more emphatic. He said the program is “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
“I would recommend anybody that’s remotely interested in engineering at one of the liberal arts schools to do this program,” he said. “Once I finally just adjusted to it, I realized I love it here. I wouldn’t trade this for the world.”
