Dartmouth College (/ˈdɑːrtməθ/; DART-məth) is a private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Emerging into national prominence at the turn of the 20th century, Dartmouth has since been considered among the most prestigious undergraduate colleges in the United States.[9]
Although originally established to educate Native Americans in Christian theology and the English way of life, the university primarily trained Congregationalist ministers during its early history before it gradually secularized. While Dartmouth is now a research university rather than simply an undergraduate college, it continues to go by "Dartmouth College" to emphasize its focus on undergraduate education.
Following a liberal arts curriculum, Dartmouth provides undergraduate instruction in 40 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs, including 60 majors in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering, and enables students to design specialized concentrations or engage in dual degree programs.[10] In addition to the undergraduate faculty of arts and sciences, Dartmouth has four professional and graduate schools: the Geisel School of Medicine, the Thayer School of Engineering, the Tuck School of Business, and the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies.[11] The university also has affiliations with the Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center. Dartmouth is home to the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, the Hood Museum of Art, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, and the Hopkins Center for the Arts. With a student enrollment of about 6,700, Dartmouth is the smallest university in the Ivy League. Undergraduate admissions are highly selective with an acceptance rate of 5.3% for the class of 2028, including a 3.8% rate for regular decision applicants.[12]
Situated on a terrace above the Connecticut River, Dartmouth's 269-acre (109 ha) main campus is in the rural Upper Valley region of New England.[13] The university functions on a quarter system, operating year-round on four ten-week academic terms.[14] Dartmouth is known for its undergraduate focus, Greek culture, and campus traditions.[15][16] Its 34 varsity sports teams compete intercollegiately in the Ivy League conference of the NCAA Division I. The university has many prominent alumni, including 170 members of the United States Congress,[17] 24 U.S. governors, 8 U.S. Cabinet secretaries, 3 Nobel Prize laureates, 2 U.S. Supreme Court justices, and a U.S. vice president. Other notable alumni include 81 Rhodes Scholars,[18] 26 Marshall Scholarship recipients,[19] 13 Pulitzer Prize recipients, 10 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies,[20] and 51 Olympic medalists.[21]
Dartmouth was founded by Eleazar Wheelock, a Yale graduate and Congregational minister from Windham, Connecticut, who had sought to establish a school to train Native Americans as Christian missionaries. It was one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Wheelock's ostensible inspiration for such an establishment resulted from his relationship with Mohegan Indian Samson Occom. Occom became an ordained minister after studying under Wheelock from 1743 to 1747, and later moved to Long Island to preach to the Montauks.[22]
Wheelock founded Moor's Indian Charity School in 1755.[23] The Charity School proved somewhat successful, but additional funding was necessary to continue school's operations, and Wheelock sought the help of friends to raise money. The first major donation to the school was given by John Phillips in 1762, who would go on to found Phillips Exeter Academy. Occom, accompanied by the Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker, traveled to England in 1766 to raise money from churches. With these funds, they established a trust to help Wheelock.[22] The head of the trust was a Methodist named William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth.
Although the fund provided Wheelock ample financial support for the Charity School, Wheelock initially had trouble recruiting Indians to the institution, primarily because its location was far from tribal territories. In seeking to expand the school into a college, Wheelock relocated it to Hanover, in the Province of New Hampshire. The move from Connecticut followed a lengthy and sometimes frustrating effort to find resources and secure a charter. The Royal Governor of New Hampshire, John Wentworth, provided the land upon which Dartmouth would be built and on December 13, 1769, issued a royal charter in the name of King George III establishing the college. That charter created a college "for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land in reading, writing & all parts of Learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing & christianizing Children of Pagans as well as in all liberal Arts and Sciences and also of English Youth and any others". The reference to educating Native American youth was included to connect Dartmouth to the Charity School and enable the use of the Charity School's unspent trust funds. Named for William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth – an important supporter of Eleazar Wheelock's earlier efforts but who, in fact, opposed creation of the college and never donated to it – Dartmouth is the nation's ninth oldest college and the last institution of higher learning established under Colonial rule.[24] The college granted its first degrees in 1771.[
Dartmouth was ranked 12th among undergraduate programs at national universities by U.S. News & World Report in its 2022 rankings. U.S. News also ranked the school 3rd best for veterans, tied for 5th best in undergraduate teaching, and 7th for "best value" national universities.[76] Dartmouth's undergraduate teaching was previously ranked 1st by U.S. News for five years in a row (2009–2013).[77] Dartmouth College is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.[78]
In Forbes' 2019 rankings of 650 universities, liberal arts colleges and service academies, Dartmouth ranked 10th overall and 10th in research universities.[79] In the Forbes 2018 "grateful graduate" rankings, Dartmouth came in first for the second year in a row.[80]
The 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked Dartmouth among the 90–110th best universities in the nation.[81] However, this specific ranking has drawn criticism from scholars for not adequately adjusting for the size of an institution, which leads to larger institutions ranking above smaller ones like Dartmouth.[82]
The 2006 Carnegie Foundation classification listed Dartmouth as the only "majority-undergraduate", "arts-and-sciences focus[ed]", "research university" in the country that also had "some graduate coexistence" and "very high research activity".[83][84][85]
For the freshman class entering Fall 2023, Dartmouth received a record 28,841 applications of which 6.2% were accepted, consistent with the prior two years; approximately 67% of those accepted are expected to matriculate. Of those admitted students who reported class rank, 444 were ranked first or second in their class, while 96% ranked in the top decile. The admitted students' academic profile showed an all-time high SAT average score of 1501, while the average composite ACT score remained at 33.[90]
Additionally, for the 2016–2017 academic year, Dartmouth received 685 transfer applications of which 5.1% were accepted, with an average SAT composite score of 1490, average composite ACT score of 34, and average college GPA of about 3.85.[91] Dartmouth meets 100% of students' demonstrated financial need in order to attend the college, and currently admits all students, including internationals, on a need-blind basis.[92]
Dartmouth guarantees to meet 100% of the demonstrated need of every admitted student who applies for financial aid at the time of admission. Dartmouth is one of seven American universities to practice international need-blind admissions.[93] This means that all applicants, including U.S. permanent residents, undocumented students in the U.S., and international students, are admitted to the college without regard to their financial circumstances. At Dartmouth, free tuition is provided for students from families with total incomes of $125,000 or less and possessing typical assets.[94] Dartmouth is also one of a few U.S. universities to eliminate undergraduate student loans and replace them with expanded scholarship grants.[95] In 2015, $88.8 million (~$112 million in 2023) in need-based scholarships were awarded to Dartmouth students.
The median family income of Dartmouth students is $200,400, with 58% of students coming from the top 10% highest-earning families and 14% from the bottom 60%.[96][needs update]
However, a 2022 article from The Dartmouth disputes the college's claims by saying the following: "To put it all together with the $9 million of student debt from the Class of 2021, this change in Dartmouth policy, hailed as "eliminat[ing] loans for undergraduate students" actually eliminated only about a quarter—27.4% to be exact—of student loans for undergraduate students. So, while Dartmouth gets glowing coverage in news publications across the country, 72.6% of the debt it saddles its students with remains."[97]