20 Things Easier to Get into than Dartmouth

By Stacy Livingston | 4/4/16 7:00am

Last week, 2,176 lucky newbies were granted access to our august institution. If you’re one of those 2,000+ admittees, props to you for already being on Dartbeat (I’m impressed!), and for really beating the odds. With 20,765 applications, Dartmouth’s acceptance rate this year was 10.5%.

Long story short, getting into Dartmouth is hard. Really hard. In fact, Dartmouth is even harder to get into than…


  • Skinny jeans with no belt loops

  • The presidential race (Actually, this is so easy that a Kentucky cat named Limberbutt McCubbins entered the running in 2015. 16StillSalty I couldn’t get rush shipping on a “Limberbutt 2016” pin in time for political party tails.)




  • Reading "Infinite Jest"

  • The firewall at the Pentagon

  • North Korea (actually)

  • Those vacuum-seal plastic packages (unless you do it like this stock photo woman #LifeHack)




  • Heaven

  • Your own locked car

  • Weird Russian synth music




  • “The League” dating application (the app’s acceptance rate is about 20% in NYC and 25% in San Francisco)

  • The fires of Mount Doom, where you will at last destroy the one ring

  • Harvard Law (their acceptance rate is around 17%)




  • Your crush’s pants (probably)

  • The MLB, if you play college baseball (about 10.5% of NCAA players are drafted onto a major league team)

  • Your aunt's boring work stories at Thanksgiving

  • …shape




  • The University of Oxford (18% admittance rate in 2014)

  • Childproof caps

  • Kombucha. It smells like elephant pee. It tastes like the pond water your fish died in. It’s still easier to get into than Dartmouth.

  • And, of course, Cornell.

Tags: humor, culture

Stacy Livingston