Dartmouth University is an outstanding Ivy League university in the idyllic college town of Hanover, New Hampshire. It is very much the mountain Ivy. It isn’t completely isolated, but it is the most rural of the Ivy League schools. It has the hardest winter, by far, and many would argue them most indomitable spirit. Students who choose Dartmouth don’t pick it just because they want a fancy name on their diploma, they pick it because they want Dartmouth. Unsurprisingly, getting in is tough. The acceptance rate for the Class of 2030 was only 5.8%.
When students first approach us about the possibility of working on a Dartmouth application, they most often have one question top-of-mind: “Can I get in?” It’s a valid question, but it is also entirely the wrong approach. If you have the grades and scores, which are the two immutable aspects of a Dartmouth application that we will break down further along, you can get in. That doesn’t, however, mean that your scores and grades are enough — because they are not. You need to be crafting an application that approaches Dartmouth holistically, just like how they will review your candidacy holistically. That means acing the academics, but also simply being an awesome and interesting person who does awesome and interesting things.
In this post, we are going to give you a peek into how we strategize with our students when Dartmouth is their dream school. Ideally, you would have years to put this plan into place. However, there are still big steps that you can take on a tighter timeline to increase your odds of getting in. The first step, or rather Step 0, is to ask a different question: “What do I need to do to increase my odds of admission?” Now, let’s get into it.
A Dartmouth acceptance requires strong strategy. Get yours.
We like to think about a Dartmouth admissions strategy as having 5 steps — after shifting your question, of course. Again, if you have time on your side these steps will be much easier to implement. If you are on a tighter timeline, you need to move quickly and confidently. It is still possible to make a big impact on your chance of acceptance, but it would help to have expert advice.
Step 1: Polish Up Your Grades and Scores
It should be obvious that you need to have exceptional grades to get into Dartmouth. While they do not include a GPA range in their admissions reports, we know that lower than great grades doesn’t get you into Dartmouth. This means that you need to spend much of your time making sure your grades have no low-points, even in your hardest classes.
Dartmouth is also known for a unique academic structure called the D-plan. Calibrated for what options you have at school, Dartmouth admissions officers want to see students take control of their educational experience, not to simply to go with the flow with what everyone else is doing. That means both adding electives and pushing yourself in difficult courses. If you have few elective options, looking outside of standard school offerings is important, like taking courses at a local community college, or through an accredited online program.
Dartmouth also cares about how you stack up next to your peers. They aren’t impressed by automatic A’s, and they expect you to be at the top of the heap if you come from a school that calculates class rank. Nearly all recently accepted and enrolled first-years whose schools calculated class rank were in the top 10th of their class.
| Class Rank | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Top 10th of HS graduating class | 96.00% |
| Top Quarter of HS graduating class | 99.00% |
| Top Half of HS graduating class | 100.00% |
| Bottom Half of HS graduating class | 0.00% |
| Total submitting class rank | 44.00% |
Beyond your transcript, scores matter when you are applying to Dartmouth. Dartmouth was the first of the Ivies to reinstate standardized testing requirements, and all the other Ivy League schools have since followed suite. They didn’t come to this decision lightly. Rather, they had their best statistical minds conducted a multi-year analysis of what the impacts of ‘test-optional’ really were — and whether they were worth it.
What they found was that the SAT and ACT are both strong predictors of college readiness, so if students don’t submit scores reviewers are missing a significant chunk of who they are as an applicant. You don’t have to have a perfect SAT or ACT to get in, but your scores do need to be impressive.
| Test | 25th Percentile | 50th Percentile | 75th Percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAT Composite | 1440 | 1,520 | 1,550 |
| ACT Composite | 32 | 34 | 35 |
Now, we aren’t shading anyone here, but you need to ignore the 25th percentile. That segment is monopolized by students with, let’s say, ‘extenuating circumstances.’ They are athletes being recruited, children of powerful people (like donors), and those with truly exceptional reasons, like being from half-way across the world with no access to test prep, for scoring lower than a 1500. Really, you should be aiming for above the 50th percentile if you want your application to keep the readers’ attention.
Parallel to polishing up your grades and scores, you need to be clarifying your passion.
Step 2: Pinpoint a Passion
The fact that you want to go to Dartmouth tells us that there are things you care about deeply in life. Ideally, at least one of them is at least loosely related to your prospective academic path.
When students come to us with academic interests, but not academic passions, it is urgent that we transform one of those interests into something approximating a passion, at least for the purposes of a compelling application. This does not mean making something up, but rather deepening into an interest that does genuinely exist.
Once you have your passion, you need to get more specific.
Step 3: Find your Niche
Your passion might be politics, but that is way too broad to build a compelling application around. So, we work with our students to carve out a niche within their passion that they can claim ownership of, in a sense, and build an application on.
For example, that politics passion is cool, but niching down might look like focusing on young candidates, zooming in on a specific geographic region, or taking aim at a political job you are particularly fascinated by. Once you have this niche, you need to be putting it into action. You may have already been doing this, but framing it as your ‘niche’ specifically will help you when you get to crafting an application.
Step 4: Edit your Extracurriculars
For students interested in Dartmouth, it is rare that they don’t have enough extracurriculars to fully fill out the application. Rather, it’s often that there are too many and something is going to have to get left on the cutting room floor. This isn’t an issue. Actually, it is imperative.
A key piece of the Dartmouth application process is editing. Yes, editing in the sense of spell-check, but also editing to create a clear narrative story that your application works to convey. Doing too much can, truly, hurt your application more than having some free time for fun.
As we edit how a student spends their time, both if we are planning a year ahead of applying or are trimming with weeks left until the deadline, we keep three buckets in mind. Dartmouth wants to make sure that you address these three key categories in your extracurriculars:
Intellectual Curiosity
Grit
Teamwork
There are infinite ways to illustrate these three categories through what you do, but we especially encourage these four options when working towards a Dartmouth acceptance:
Internships
Long-Term Volunteer Work
Leadership pf School Clubs
Supplementary Coursework
Once you have your extracurriculars in order, it’s time to get into the application itself.
Step 5: Apply!
Now we have gotten to where you probably thought we were going to start — actually applying.
Dartmouth has withheld the release of the Early Decision acceptance rate for the last few application cycles, so we don’t have the numbers for the Class of 2030 yet. However, when we look at students admitted for the Fall of 2025, they reported that 768 of 3,552 applicants.
| ED (Class of 2029) | Number |
|---|---|
| Applicants | 3,552 |
| Acceptance Rate | 21.60% |
That ED acceptance rate far surpasses the RD acceptance rate, so much so that the overall is brought down to 5.8%. Ultimately, what this tells us is that you need to apply early if you want to get into Dartmouth. If they see your application in the Regular Decision pool (and not by way of a deferral), they know that you aren’t serious about them. If you aren’t serious, why, they ask, should they be serious about you?
After you have decided on the application path you’ll be following, it’s time to actually write. Remember, Dartmouth expects you to be academically impressive and intellectually mature, but what they need to see most in the written portions of your application isn’t a list of accomplishments nor self-congratulatory supplements. It’s the real you they want to see, the community-minded team player who shows up for those around you, pursues passions with an unquenchable thirst, and who cares deeply about being your best self. They say as much:
| 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 residency | x | |||
| Religious affiliation/commitment | x | |||
| Volunteer work | x | |||
| Work experience | x | |||
| Level of applicant’s interest | x |
The 2026-27 Dartmouth first-year supplement hasn’t come out yet, and typically is released at the end of July. As soon as it is out, we will be doing a dedicated post breaking down each question and how best to answer it. In the meantime, review the questions from last year and take a stab at them. They may be repeated, and either way it is good practice.
Dartmouth has Dartmouth wants to know that you know them. In your supplements, you need to cite the work of specific faculty, as well as to emphasize how access to faculty and learning in a close community are both important to you.
They also do not expect you to love the woods already, although many students are drawn to Dartmouth by the pairing of exceptional academics with the White Mountains, but they do expect you to truly want to be where Dartmouth is. That means going somewhere removed from hustle and bustle, quite secluded and ripe for mental exploration.
Conclusion
Getting into Dartmouth isn’t just about being a top student, or even having a passion for what you want to study. Dartmouth wants students who crave precisely what Dartmouth offers, and who are up to the academic challenge. When we work with our students on a Dartmouth application, it isn’t a copy and paste job. Each supplement needs to be precisely tuned to the priorities of Dartmouth as an academic institution, but also as a community. This may sound precious, but it is truly necessary if you want to get in.
If you want to craft the perfect application for Dartmouth, reach out to us today.