Is Dartmouth too small for me?

Shrmpngrtz
Fri, 28 Apr 2017 21:06:32 +0000

Small size? Well…think of it this way. In your first year, let’s say you will be at Dartmouth roughly 270 days. So if you meet 16 new students every single day during your freshman year, there would still be 100+ students you never got to know. And every year, ~1150 new students matriculate. I definitely did not come close to meeting my entire graduating class and certainly not the three classes before and after me - and I was very social during my time at Dartmouth.

With that said, social life in college might be a bit different than what you are used to in high school. Most people have at least two distinct circles of friends - those who you live with and those who you study with. Sometimes they overlap, but a lot of the time, they don’t. In addition, many students have extracurricular friends as well. So for example, in a fraternity, you could have a track athlete who is majoring in gov, rooming with a bio major who is on the pre-med track and loves the outdoors. They’re good friends and hang out at night and on the weekends, but the track athlete also hangs out with his track friends and studies with his gov friends. The bio major studies with his bio friends and goes hiking with his DOC friends. How they allocate their time between the other groups is entirely up to them. Don’t forget you can always meet new people by joining new clubs, visiting different frats on the weekend, taking classes and studying with people that are outside of your major, getting to know the friends of your friends, participating in IM sports, and so on.