One more difference between Dartmouth and Middlebury that may be important to some students, particularly given the remoteness of these two schools:
Students can have a car all 4 years at Middlebury, while at Dartmouth they’re prohibited from having one until their junior year.
Similarly, early career admissions pros describing how admissions decisions get made need to be taken with a grain of salt - even those who write popular books about it. No different from a recent college graduate who heads to Amazon and explains to others their AI strategy. They only understand it from their perspective.
That is sure part of it - and the general area around Dartmouth the “upper valley,” is actually the “big” population area of northern/central New England (sounds weird I know) - between Burlington and say Nashua/Southern NH - it has DHMC, a VA hospital (Hanover/Lebanon/White River Jctn) and all the chains and whatnot you could want within 15 minutes of Dartmouth in lebanon or west lebanon, even amtrak in White River Junction. I am not sure the nearest Target or Walmart, Five Guys, Taco Bell, to Middlebury, but my memory is far…Hanover just isn’t really THAT rural.
I am also a bit biased as I have a friend that relocated to Hanover as an adult (one got a great job at the university)… and they shockingly love it (were VERY surprised as “city people”) -enough that arts and events at the arts center at the school to keep them generally entertained…(I don’t think “metro” Middlebury is big enough to do that). My friend traveled a ton for work and was at logan all the time -annoying for sure, but made it work taking the hourly (nonstop) bus to logan…I visited her and there is rush hour traffic in Hanover …
If being close to Taco Bell and Five Guys is important to you, then Middlebury isn’t the school for you. If being close to mountains, lakes, and some of the best hiking in the Northeast is more your speed, then Middlebury is a paradise. BTW—there’s now an Amtrak station in Middlebury, with daily train service to NYC and Burlington.
Agree with that… pointing out the difference in levels of “rural” - people hear NH and VT and rural schools and think they are the same, and I think they aren’t myself….
Then again, Dartmouth is literally ON the Appalachian Trail too…
Yeah, none of this is about objectively better or worse, but subjectively some kids can like some of these schools a lot better than other. It just depends on the kid.
Which is why before actually deciding, a visit might be a good idea. You can do that just with post-offer visits if you don’t ED. But if you want to ED, then it does make sense to try to visit some colleges first, including the ED college.
In fact, I would really reverse that logic. If you can do some visits and an ED opportunity naturally emerges, great. If not, also fine.
Dartmouth is certainly close to Lebanon, but if you drive a few miles north out of Hanover on Rte 10, you’re very quickly in Dogpatch.
For sure! It is not a major metropolis by any means… though I, myself, can’t imagine 4 years in Middlebury, but Hanover seems fine. Splitting hairs, to be fair, and everyone has their own particulars - many think Hanover is way too rural…Hanover seems closer enough to a Burlington or Amherst to me…Middlebury really feels like the sticks …I think I would feel isolated… kind of like some people won’t apply to Colby but love Bowdoin.
Anyway, my opinion isn’t important to OP, but I think they should visit if they haven’t (and they may have!!) for an ED school! or at least talk to a lot of people or use a LOT of google earth./street view/maps.
The discussion in this thread seems to assume that the OP has already gotten into all three schools and is trying to decide where to go. The OP is soliciting opinions on “where to ED” and that is a risky line of approach. Only the OP can decide to where to ED, since it really needs to be the place that the OP feels that they belong to - this is essential for a successful ED application. Trying to reverse-engineer this may not be the best approach…
Except that when I reframed the discussion as leading to (as it seemed to me) :
OP’s response was:
So I’m not sure all this other stuff matters to OP. I agree it should be the driver in an ED application but it seems to take a backseat to a prestige-maximizing strategy here.
So you’re saying for non-athletes ED and RD are about the same?
I don’t know enough about the internal data at the college to say that. Only someone in admissions could tell us that. What I’m saying is that the inclusion of hooked applicants like athletes in the ED admissions pool exaggerates the apparent advantage of ED and makes it appear greater than it is.
It is really pretty rural. The village itself is tiny, and it is mostly surrounded by woodland with some fields in the valleys. That, actually, is one of the things that many students love about being there. My kid loved the fact that she could walk right off campus into nature, as well as natural beauty of the area. But it is not a place for people who prefer an urban or suburban surrounding. My kid loves the city that she’s in now, but misses getting out into nature and living close to nature.
Of course, Burlington as a city does seem weird to me. I went to grad school at UIUC , and Champaign-Urbana seemed pretty small and rural, but they have more than twice the population of Burlington. Hanover with its 11,000 residents is not much bigger than Middlebury’s 9,000 (Middlebury the village, not the college)
Burlington is a pretty typical New England small city so not sure what is weird about it. Not every New England small city has a flagship university smack dab in the middle of it– so that makes it an outlier of sorts– but otherwise it’s inline with its peers.
It’s just a bit strange to me that a “city” has fewer than 50K residents. Our old suburb, which is considered a “village”, has more than that.
The metropolitan statistical area which includes Burlington has a population of about 230,000.
All of which brings us back to the point of the OP which is that there are probably more important differences between Middlebury and Dartmouth. Dartmouth has an active Greek life; Midd does not. Dartmouth has about 2,000 graduate students; Midd does not. Middlebury has a cool mascot; Dartmouth does not.
Not true - you’re forgetting Keggy the Keg 
Absolutely. The atmosphere is very different as well. While she was at Midd, my kid spent a weekend at Dartmouth, or more correctly, at Dartmouth Hillel (she was active in the Midd Hillel), and she said that it was a different world. While it may only be the differences between the Midd Hillel and the Dartmouth Hillel (the differences can be understood from the fact that Midd Hillel was lead by a Progressive woman Rabbi, while Dartmouth Hillel is being run by a Modern Orthodox Rabbi), she said that the two places are have very different atmosphere and feel.
While both are rural, that is really the most similar thing about them. I think that the fact that they are both very rural, are selective, and that Dartmouth is pretty small for a R1 university has created an illusion that they are similar.
Spread out over some 1,500 square miles, with an average population density of 150/square mile. For comparison, the Chicago Metropolitan area has a population density of almost 900/square mile. The Burlington “metropolitan statistical area” are three rural counties with a scattering of small towns and tiny cities, none with more than 20K inhabitants each (most cities with fewer than 10K inhabitants). It is only by squinting in a certain light can one call this a “Metropolitan” statistical area.
It’s only a “Metropolitan” statistical area, because Burlington, at some 44,000 residents is the largest city close to them, at least south of the border.
Truth is, if not for the border, Burlington would be part of a real metropolitan area which would continue from Montreal. As it is, the urban spread of Montreal cannot go south of the border.
Your daughter experienced a difference between Dartmouth and Middlebury based upon a small focused interest group, not on the dominant campus culture. While it may be a relevant comparison for some, relatively few are concerned with differences between rabbis when comparing Middlebury College to Dartmouth College.
The rural locations, size of student bodies, academic excellence, and type of student who matriculated at each school seem to be better measures for general comments. The fact is that there is a substantial overlap in applications to the two colleges.