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In recognition of the wind-swept hills, lone pines and famed New Hampshire granite that surround Dartmouth, the September 2003 issue of Outside magazine has ranked the College seventh among its "40 Best College Towns."
While the article includes numerous New England schools as ideal places to work and play, the top honors go to the University of California-Santa Cruz as the number one school with the ideal combination of outdoor excursion/indoor academic setting and surrounding town.
Outside magazine used criteria such as the sport-friendliness of the college, the type of town the school was located in, the involvement of the student body in outdoor pursuits on campus, including the types of outdoor clubs that exist, and the environmental initiative of the college to determine their rankings, said Katie Arnold, its managing editor.
While the magazine's target group is active outdoor people in their twenties and thirties, not current or prospective college students, Arnold added that the article merged several of the objectives of the magazine.
"The article is an interesting thing for us because our average reader is older, but we thought it was a good way to reach out to the younger demographics," she said.
Arnold agreed that the article would be useful for both prospective students and their parents with an interest in the outdoors, as well as current students of the ranked schools and their parents who might enjoy reading about their school and learning about the available outdoor options on campus.
Furthermore, she said, older readers could "live vicariously" through the article, or the article could be useful for someone looking to relocate to an active outdoor town, as "often the best towns are college towns."
The article highlights several of the "Little Ivies" such as Middlebury College and Williams College, as well as Dartmouth's Ancient Eight counterparts Cornell University and Princeton University, as schools with the appealing combination of outdoor-enthusiast locale and a commitment to the environment, as well as esteemed academics.
Dartmouth is ranked higher than the other Ivy League schools mentioned; Cornell is ranked 14, and Princeton 35.
