<p>My friend and I are the best students in our small class of 30 students. We applied to a bunch of the same schools, including Yale, Dartmouth, Duke, Middlebury, Harvard and maybe another I forget. I was wondering, since we are from such a small class, are we competing for a spot at each of these schools? Also, his grandfather was a tenured professor at Dartmouth and Yale, how much will this help?</p>
<p>I would say that it’s not so much that you are “competing for a spot” because I know of many small schools (though admittedly not as small as yours) where multiple students have gotten into highly selective colleges… a friend of a friend from Rochester had 5 matriculants in his class at Yale, and I think 7 at Harvard–those are matriculants, not just acceptances! </p>
<p>I would also say that while his grandfather being a tenured professor at those schools might be an object of consideration, you will prevail if your application is genuinely the better one… especially with colleges these days trying to cut down on their number of legacy acceptances.</p>
<p>Good luck to you! I’m no admissions officer; these are just gut feelings.</p>
<p>In this situation, I believe you will LOVE Dartmouth admissions. There are no “regional” admissions officers at Dartmouth. In fact, the applications are RANDOMLY given to various members of the admissions staff for evaluation. Thus, it is entirely possible and even probable that your files will be read by different people. Thus, you will be compared against yourself…and the rest of the ENTIRE applicant pool…specific HS to HS comparisons are not frequent at Dartmouth because of the way they set it up. Yale, Harvard, Brown, Columbia, etc, etc are not like this and actually do have regional reps, so I cannot speak for how it will affect your admission at those universities. Good luck, nonetheless!</p>
<p>you will either be admitted or rejected (or waitlisted for that matter) based on your own credentials/luck - not based on others from your school. you will be compared to the applicant pool as a whole, not compared just to those from your school. best of luck to you!</p>
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<p>I think you are mistaken on this point as the school has quite a few regional admissions officers.</p>
<p>link to the regional admissions officers</p>
<p>[Regional</a> Officers](<a href=“http://www.dartmouth.edu/~interviewers/admissions_info/reg_contact.html]Regional”>http://www.dartmouth.edu/~interviewers/admissions_info/reg_contact.html)</p>
<p>Note, though, that there are multiple admissions officers per region. Moreover, there are admissions officers not assigned to a specific region. The applications are indeed distributed randomly among the various members of the committee. Even if the applicants are in the same “region”, the file is by no means guaranteed to be read by the same person. Those individuals who are assigned to regions are “go to” people if one needs specific help, but, for example, there is no person who reads ONLY New York applicants or ONLY Arizona applicants, etc etc. At the Dartmouth information sessions, they go over this clearly.</p>