News
Valedictorians are normally imagined as people who never leaves the library, but this year's valedictorian Kamala Dansinghani has pursued interests outside classwork, such as tutoring children and volunteering at a hospital.
Dansinghani, who will graduate with a biochemistry major and a psychology minor, will attend Harvard Medical School in the fall, where she hopes she will be able to express her love of science and her love of working with people, especially children.
At Harvard, she plans to study pediatrics, obstetrics or prenatal care.
Of course, besides her extracurricular interests, Dansinghani spent a lot of time concentrating on her studies -- she does after all have a 4.0 average and eight citations for outstanding academic work.
She also did research at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center her junior year as a Howard Hughes Intern and a Presidential Scholar.
A Phi Beta Kappa, Dansinghani was named a member of USA Today's 20-person all-USA College Academic first team in 1993.
Dansinghani's story is especially amazing because in high school and during her early years at Dartmouth, she was battling anorexia.
In high school, "I developed the eating disorder and wasn't sure I was even going to make it to college," she said.
"My first two years here, I was still struggling with anorexia, which made everything a lot harder emotionally for me,'' she said.
With the help of Education Professor Andrew Garrod, Dansinghani wrote a 77-page autobiographical work about her personal experience with anorexia.