Dartmouth Mountains?

Corbett
Fri, 01 Dec 2017 17:54:16 +0000

Could someone tell me what the atmosphere of Dartmouth is like in regards to its natural surroundings? How would it compare to other schools? Are Dartmouth students more or less active/outdoorsy compared to their peers?

Dartmouth’s reputation for attracting outdoorsy students in a beautiful natural setting is completely justified. It contrasts sharply with other elite northeastern universities (e.g. most other Ivies, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown), which have obviously urban settings. Cornell does have a nice natural setting, but it’s a bigger school in a bigger community, and is noted for lakes, rivers, and gorges, rather than mountains.

If Dartmouth’s proximity to the mountains is attractive, then the most obvious alternatives are Williams and Middlebury, which are small New England liberal arts colleges. Williams is a particularly close match for Dartmouth in terms of selectivity and is about as close to the mountains as you can get; however, the school and community are significantly smaller than at Dartmouth, and more difficult to travel to (no regional airport, train service, or interstate highways, all of which exist in the Hanover area).