In the 2024-2025 admissions cycle, Dartmouth boasted an acceptance rate of 5.4%, their lowest ever. But how did their acceptance rate get so low? Why did it get so low? And what makes a student a competitive (or not competitive) applicant? Thankfully, we dig into the data to give you a data-driven strategic approach to help you put your best foot forward.
The Common Data Set, or CDS, was created to provide colleges with a template of information to fill out. That information gets sent to institutions like the College Board and US News & World report to help them inform their rankings. It’s also used by craft college consulting firms, like us, to figure out how and why colleges are doing what they do. Today, we’re going to explore section C of Dartmouth's 2024-2025 CDS, or the section that covers first-time, first-year admissions.
Trend Spotting: Five Years of Dartmouth Admissions
Before we get into all the raw data for 2024-2025, let’s take a look at how admissions numbers have changed over the last five years at Dartmouth:
| Year | Total Applicants | Number of Admitted Students | Acceptance Rate | ED Acceptance Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 31,656 | 1,710 | 5.4% | 19.18% |
| 2024 | 28,841 | 1,797 | 6.23% | 19.94% |
| 2023 | 28,336 | 1,808 | 6.38% | 21.27% |
| 2022 | 28,356 | 1,750 | 6.17% | 25.11% |
| 2021 | 21,392 | 1,972 | 9.22% | 26.23% |
Key Takeaways for Dartmouth’s Five-Year Trend:
10,000 more students applied in 2024 than did in 2020
The ED acceptance rate is hovering around 20%, but getting lower each year
Dartmouth is getting more exclusive as time goes on
There are tens of thousands of applicants to Dartmouth every year, and the reality is that most of those applicants are wildly qualified. You need to be the strongest applicant you can be, and we can help you do that.
C1: First-Time, First-Year Admission, Applications
The very first part of section C gives us the raw admissions data we know you want to see. In this section, you can see breakdowns by gender and location, which give us an interesting glimpse into who applies – and who gets in – to Dartmouth.
| First-Time, First-Year Applicants | Total | Admitted | Acceptance Rate | Enrolled | Yield Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men | 15,153 | 893 | 5.89% | 612 | 68.5% |
| Women | 15,812 | 795 | 5.02% | 554 | 69.6% |
| Another gender | 690 | 22 | 3.18% | 16 | 72.7% |
| Unknown gender | 1 | 0 | 0% | n/a | n/a |
| First-Time, First-Year Applicants | Total | In State | Out of State | International |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Applied | 31,656 | 468 | 21,220 | 9,968 |
| Admitted | 1,710 | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Acceptance rate | 5.4% | n/a | n/a | n.a |
| Enrolled | 1,182 | 25 | 988 | 170 |
| Yield rate | 69.1% | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Key Takeaways for Acceptance Rates:
Dartmouth doesn’t release the admissions breakdown exactly for in/out-of-state or international students, but we can probably assume in-state is higher than out-of-state, which will be much higher than international.
There’s a fairly equal gender split in applicants, admits, and enrolees – which is kind of rare!
What’s remarkable about Dartmouth’s stats is that they are, for an Ivy, fairly unremarkable. Their acceptance rates, gender splits, and yield rates all make sense to us – although we’re sure they have enjoyed becoming harder to get into over the last few years.
C9-C2: First-Time, First-Year Profile, or Scores and Grades
Dartmouth was the first school to go back to mandatory testing because they realized that higher test scores resulted in stronger academic performance. This makes sense to us, and our guidance for those who submitted in the test-optional days is the same for now – you need to have the highest scores possible to be a competitive applicant.
However, even though we know test scores are important to Dartmouth, they actually don’t release any of their testing data, nor do they release most of their GPA data, in their CDS report. This is fairly unusual, but if they follow their peer institutions then you’ll want as close to a 4.0 as possible and a 1550+ or 35+ on your standardized scores.
What they do show us in this section is class rank:
| Class Rank | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Top tenth of HS graduating class | 93% |
| Top quarter of HS graduating class | 99% |
| Top half of HS graduating class | 100% |
| Percent reporting class rank | 44% |
Why This Matters: 93% of applicants who submitted their class rank were in the top 10% of their graduating class. That tells us you need to have nearly perfect grades.
Early Decision
Dartmouth’s ED acceptance rate has been surprisingly high over the years, but we’re starting to see that number get smaller and smaller. Not only are far more students applying to Dartmouth overall, but there are many more ED applicants as well. We assume some eagle-eyed students have noticed this trend and have chosen to take advantage of it.
| Early Decision Stats | Data |
|---|---|
| Number of ED applications | 3,551 |
| Number of ED acceptances | 681 |
| ED acceptance rate | 19.17% |
Why This Matters: ~20% versus ~5%? We’d take those odds.
Waitlist
Dartmouth publishes their waitlist data, which a lot of Ivies and other elite schools do not do. We appreciate this because it gives students clarity on their realistic shot at getting in off the waitlist.
| Waitlist Stats | Data |
|---|---|
| Students placed on waitlist | 2,589 |
| Students accepting a spot on the waitlist | 2,189 |
| Students admitted off the waitlist | 29 |
| Waitlist acceptance rate | 1.32% |
Why This Matters: Getting off the Dartmouth waitlist is more challenging than walking through Hanover without a coat in January. However, it’s not impossible. We help students get off the waitlist every year.
Look, the reality is, very few spots open up for waitlist students. We know this sucks, but we think this information is actually kind of freeing. If you’ve been waitlisted, you need to secure a spot at another school – and maybe, just maybe, you can get off the Dartmouth list and be pleasantly surprised. But we do think there is a weird comfort in such low odds – the chances are so low it’s almost like, why not try?
Considerations
Here’s where Dartmouth shares the more subjective parts of their application process, the “Considerations.”
| Academic Factors | Very Important | Important | Considered | Not Considered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rigor of secondary school record | X | |||
| Class rank | X | |||
| Academic GPA | X | |||
| Standardized test scores | X | |||
| Application essay | X | |||
| Recommendation(s) | X |
Key Takeaways for Academic Factors:
Everything academic is very important to Dartmouth. Everything.
Great grades, scores, essays, class choices, rec letters, etc., are non-negotiables here
| Nonacademic Factors | Very Important | Important | Considered | Not Considered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interview | X | |||
| Extracurricular activities | X | |||
| Talent/ability | X | |||
| Character/personal qualities | X | |||
| First generation | X | |||
| Alumni/ae relation | X | |||
| Geographical residence | X | |||
| State residencey | X | |||
| Religious afilliation | X | |||
| Volunteer work | X | |||
| Work experience | X | |||
| Level of applicant's interest | X |
Key Takeaways for Nonacademic Factors:
Dartmouth does track demonstrated interest – so sign up for a virtual tour and get on the email list ASAP
Being a NH resident may not help you much
Extracurriculars and “character” are the most important factors in this section
“Character” is kind of nebulous here, and you should reach out to us if you want us to tell you exactly how you show your character, but we can speak broadly to extracurriculars. It is not enough to just be on a sports team, student government, and maybe start a club or two. You need more significant and robust activities to be a truly competitive applicant. We help students build impressive, niche extracurricular profiles every year, and we’d love to help you too.
Conclusion
Despite some important missing data (cough scores, cough GPAs???? are you kidding, Dartmouth, reveal yourself!), we can see from what they do tell us that Dartmouth is hard to get into. This isn’t shocking information, but now you’re armed with more statistics to set yourself up for success.
Now, remember that this data is just that – data. It doesnt tell us everything Dartmouth cares about, and it reveals nothing about you, the applicant. No two students are the same, and no matter what kind of applicant you might be (ED, RD, legacy, athlete, etc.), we can help tailor a specific plan to help you get into Dartmouth.
One way to increase your odds? Working with college consultants who are experts in the field and have a high rate of success getting students into Dartmouth. We help countless students gain admission to top universities every single year – reach out to us today to get started.