So I love Dartmouth . . .

dartmouthdad
Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:35:38 +0000

Last year, my son had a similar choice between UCLA and Dartmouth. We live in Southern California and he always wanted to attend UCLA. It is where I went to college and he followed their men’s basketball program. After being admitted to both schools, he came to realize that the financial crisis in California would make it very difficult for him to graduate in 4 years and the cutbacks could adversely affect his undergraduate experience. That was last year, and sadly his concerns have now become reality. UCLA has decided to hire a small percentage of the professors they will need for '13 and class size will grow considerably. Costs to students will be increasing and the extra time it will take to graduate will ultimately make the student fees more costly. This is sad for my alma mater, but my son wisely chose Dartmouth and is about to enter his sophomore year. He had a great freshman year and has no regrets with his decision. As for law schools, look at the data from the top 10 law schools to see that Dartmouth places far more than does UCLA and considering that there are about 1,100 undergraduates graduating each year from Dartmouth compared to over 6,000 out of UCLA shows that there is a significant difference in admission rates to major law schools between these two fine institutions.