<p>Ummm . . . You should want to go to Chicago in order to associate with fabulous, interesting students like phuriku. But you may want to backcheck some of what he says if he is talking trash about other schools’ curriculums. (As he doesn’t very often.)</p>
<p>Dartmouth, like Chicago, is on the quarter system. (Which means, by the way, that students from either school may have trouble using a semester-school’s study abroad programs, because the start and end dates often don’t work well, especially in spring and summer.) What phuriku’s link shows is that by the end of the third QUARTER of Japanese at Dartmouth (“Japanese 3”), one can expect to know 300 kanji. The third YEAR of Japanese at Dartmouth is Japanese 31-33.</p>
<p>Where Dartmouth and Chicago really part company is that it looks like you can’t go beyond first-year Japanese at Dartmouth without either spending the summer in Japan doing intensive Japanese II or learning second-year Japanese elsewhere. Japanese II is not offered at Dartmouth proper. Also, advanced courses on culture and history are much slimmer pickings at Dartmouth – a grand total of four (not all of which are taught every year), vs. at least 11 at Chicago (not all of which are going to be taught every year either).</p>