CollegeVine College Essay Team August 21, 2025 21 Dartmouth College,Essay Guides 2025-26

How to Write the Dartmouth College Essays 2025-2026

Dartmouth College is a private Ivy League research college in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.

Dartmouth has three supplemental essays that are required for all applicants. The first prompt asks you to explain your motivation for applying to Dartmouth. The second prompt gives you a choice between two different options, while the third lets you choose between seven prompts.

Since Dartmouth College is one of the most competitive schools in the country, you want to be sure your essays will help your application truly shine. In this post, we’ll break down each prompt and discuss how to write an excellent response.

Read these Dartmouth essay examples written by real students to inspire your writing! 

Dartmouth College Supplemental Essay Prompts

This is a classic “Why This College” Essay prompt, but since you only have 100 words to explain your interest in Dartmouth, there’s an added twist of testing how eloquently and effectively you can describe your connection to the College. 

As an Ivy League college, Dartmouth appeals to many applicants for its excellent academics and elite status within the world of higher education. But these are rather vague, surface-level attributes that also apply to plenty of other schools around the country. So, to differentiate your response, you’ll need to get much more specific. 

Getting to the level of specificity you need will require a good amount of brainstorming, especially since the essay is so short. You want to make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to say before you start writing, or else you might end up using all 100 words without actually saying much of anything.

To avoid that, reflect on your academic and career goals, and pick one or two (you don’t have space for more than that) that are particularly important to you. Then, research specific resources available at Dartmouth that would help you achieve those goals. 

For example, say you want to pursue a career in environmental policy and conservation. You could highlight Dartmouth’s Environmental Studies study abroad program in Namibia and South Africa as a resource at Dartmouth that will deepen your understanding of how the climate crisis affects other parts of the world, where people have drastically different lifestyles. You could also talk about how you hope to work with Professor Bala Chaudhary through the two-term Presidential Research Scholarship to study how to increase diversity in STEM fields, as you think everyone must have a seat at the table when discussing how to build towards a greener future.

By citing specific examples of programs that can only be found at Dartmouth, you will show admissions officers 1) that you have done your research on their school, which shows you are genuinely interested and not just applying for fun, and 2) that you already have a clear sense of how you will fit into their campus community, which will give them confidence you are ready to start contributing to Dartmouth right away.

Also, remember that your college life will be about more than just academics. If you have space, mention one extracurricular that you are interested in. It doesn’t necessarily have to be connected to the theme you’ve focused on for the rest of the essay, as introducing another one of your interests can help make your response feel more thorough.

For example, you could talk about how you’d like to mentor local children through the SIBs program, to develop a stronger connection not just to Dartmouth, but to the surrounding area as well.

One last thing to be aware of is that, like any school, Dartmouth has a few features that, while distinctive to the school, appeal to a large number of applicants. These features include:

• The flexible D-plan calendar
• The historic Dartmouth Outing Club and its associated Freshman Trips program
• Being located in beautiful, remote New Hampshire

While you can talk about these things in your response, make sure you aren’t just name-dropping them. Remember, the point of this essay is to show why you’re a better match for Dartmouth than other applicants. If you just say “I love the outdoors, so I’d like to join the Outing Club,” and don’t provide any more detail, you aren’t doing anything to set yourself apart, as many other applicants are likely to say pretty much the same thing.

Instead, talk about how your high school had an outdoor trip requirement, and you made some of your closest friends on that trip, so you’re hoping the outdoors will play a similar, community-building role for you in college. That extra level of detail will show admissions officers your own personal connection to this popular resource at Dartmouth. 

The phrasing is a little more creative, but this is a Diversity essay prompt, which means you want to do two things in your response. 

First, describe some particular feature of the environment in which you were raised. The prompt says just “the environment,” but 250 words isn’t enough to flesh out every aspect of your upbringing. So, you want to narrow your focus to one feature that is especially relevant to understanding “the person you are today.” Here are some examples of things you could zero in on:

• Your Bolivian heritage
• Being the oldest of 7 siblings
• Being raised by a single parent
• How both of your parents being doctors shaped your worldview

Keep in mind that “the environment in which you were raised” is a very open-ended phrase, so you can also get creative here if you want. For example, you could talk about you and your parents setting up a garden in your backyard, or about how your dad is a huge Beatles fan and played them non-stop while driving you to school. If something was an important part of your life growing up, it’s fair game to write about for this prompt.

Once you’ve narrowed your focus, the second thing you want to do is explain how that feature of your environment shaped the person you are today. In other words, how is this thing relevant to the kind of college student you will be? Why do admissions officers need to know about it?

Answering that question will require some reflection on your part to figure out what exactly you learned from being brought up in that kind of environment. There is no one right answer. Just be honest about what you learned, and make sure that your takeaway connects to your description of your environment, as otherwise your essay may feel generic or impersonal.

For example, you could talk about how your doctor parents sharing stories about patients they saw from all walks of life gave you an appreciation for our shared humanity, and responsibility to each other regardless of our backgrounds. Although you’re frightened by the sight of blood and won’t follow their footsteps in the medical field, your motivation to help others manifests itself through your desire to be a civil rights lawyer.

Alternatively, you could talk about how your dad bombarding you with trivia about Beatles lyrics eventually inspired you to pursue a creative outlet of your own, to express your feelings in a personal way, which led you to become a photographer. 

This prompt is a pretty much completely open-ended opportunity for you to tell Dartmouth about some of the key qualities that make you, you. As one of the most prestigious schools in the country, Dartmouth will receive tons of applications from students around the world with impressive GPAs and extracurriculars. This essay isn’t about rehashing your achievements, though. Instead, you want to tell admissions officers something they don’t already know from reading your personal statement or activities list. 

Essentially, the question is: beyond your resume, who are you?

This question is incredibly broad, but you only have 250 words to answer it, so you want to try to distill your identity down to a few key qualities or experiences. This filtering is much easier said than done, but asking yourself questions like the following can help get the ball rolling: 

• How would your friends or family describe you to someone who has never met you?
• Which role do you play in your friend group? How do you stand out from the rest of them?
• Which three words would you use to describe yourself?

Once you’ve picked out a couple of qualities that you want to focus on, think of experiences you’ve had that highlight them. Remember, show, don’t tell—if you just tell admissions officers “Family is important to me,” they won’t understand anything about your personality, because family is important to lots of people.

Instead, you want to share anecdotes that show your reader how important family has been in your life. For example, you could write about how hard your dad worked when you were little, but how he would take afternoons off to take you to baseball games, and how those days were some of your absolute favorites.

If you’re feeling bold, this prompt can also present an opportunity to get creative and highlight some truly unusual aspects of your personality. For example, you could pick three of your favorite Taylor Swift lyrics and connect each one to one of your values or qualities. Or you could write about your fascination with the creatures that live in tide pools. Maybe you start each sentence with a letter that spells out “I AM [name]”.

While these more creative approaches can do a lot to truly set you apart from other applicants, they also carry more risk if they aren’t executed well. So, if you aren’t sure if you’re going to be able to pull it off, stick to a more traditional response—you can still write an excellent, engaging essay without doing anything out of the box. 

This prompt allows you to showcase your personality and talk about a passion, hobby, or experience that does not really “fit” into the themes explored by other prompts. Think about this essay as a personal inquiry; it gives the admissions officer the ability to humanize your application and understand what type of person they are admitting to Dartmouth. 

There is no shortage of topics you can explore with this prompt. 

• Are you excited whenever Sunday Night Football is able to bring together your busy family for a night?  

• Or, are you excited when it rains outside and you can dance around with your friends?  

• Or, are you excited when you get the opportunity to talk about gender equality at an organization where you intern? 

Whether it’s a monumental achievement or a simple pleasure, at the core of this essay, the admissions office is asking you to speak with passion. 

It’s important to connect whatever topic you are discussing to the resources and opportunities available to you at Dartmouth. 

For instance, if you are a student who gets super excited when you can collect rocks down at the beach with your friends, this would be a great chance to connect your passion back to research opportunities at Dartmouth in the Earth History department, or how the outdoorsy feel of Dartmouth would feel like home. 

Don’t be afraid to take a risk with this prompt. If watching Avatar excites you, feel free to explore this route, especially if you are able to connect it back to your prospective major of East-Asian studies or film/production, say, at Dartmouth. However, be cautious about going on a tangent or exploring too many things within this essay. Stick to talking about one thing that excites you and connecting it back to Dartmouth.  

Unlike the personal reflection prompts, this essay asks you what kind of impact you hope to have on the world in the future. This prompt can be answered in a variety of different ways and largely depends on what your personal goals and passions are. 

When responding to this prompt, you should first do a close reading of the quote to provide some further context for your response: “We must use our lives to make the world a better place, not just to acquire things.” Huerta specifies that we use our “lives” to make an impact, not just a single action. This implies that Dartmouth is looking for something long-term that you are dedicating your time to that will make a positive impact on others. 

It may also be helpful to look into the author of this quote to discover what motivated them to say the quote in the first place: Dolores Huerta is a prominent civil rights activist who dedicated her life to advocating for the rights of immigrant and migrant labor workers. How might Huerta’s dedication to a life of activism align with Dartmouth’s core values? There are many ways to leave a powerful impact on the world, not all of which are through activism.  

The topic you choose does not necessarily have to be tied to your academic interests. For instance, you could be a prospective Neuroscience major who also has a passion for education and volunteers as an English tutor at an ESL (English as a Second Language) school, aspiring to positively impact immigrant communities by providing them with the powerful tool of language. As long as your passion is long-term, you should be able to create a powerful narrative that will resonate with the admissions committee. 

However, if your topic does align with your academic or career goals, make sure that you explain in detail how it will improve the world around you. Perhaps you want to be an MD-PhD who does cancer research, specializing in treating low-income patients. Or maybe you want to be a speechwriter for politicians and world leaders whose words will help to change the world. 

Whatever you choose to write about, be sure to show the admissions committee how your topic contributes to the betterment of the campus community at Dartmouth, and beyond. 

If you consider yourself an avid reader, this might be the prompt for you. However, you don’t have to be a book worm to choose this prompt. Ask yourself if there was ever a book you read that had a profound impact on yourself and how you see the world. It could be something as simple as The Cat in the Hat or as dense as the 1,500 page Les Miserables. 

A word of caution though: it’s more important you choose a book that actually impacted you rather than choosing a book you think will impress the admissions committee. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that you might want to avoid books that you were required to read for class. Yes, 1984 can alter the way people view the world, especially in today’s day and age, but Dartmouth is also aware many high schools require students to read this book. You aren’t barred from choosing a book you read for class, but before you pick To Kill a Mockingbird or The Great Gatsby, brainstorm books you’ve read for your own enjoyment as well.

It’s important that you spend the majority of your essay focusing on how the book helped you imagine other lives and the self-reflection/discoveries that came out of it. That being said, the strongest essays begin with a moment of impact. Maybe you were sitting on the floor of your bedroom devouring a chapter at 2 am, or maybe a line from the book kept echoing in your head while you were riding the bus the next day. Details like this immerse the reader in your experience.

From there, tie the book’s ideas directly to your life. For example, instead of saying “The book taught me empathy,” you might write: “After reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I noticed how quick I was to judge classmates who lived differently than me. Junior’s raw honesty about poverty and belonging made me more patient and curious instead of dismissive.” That’s the kind of connection that makes the essay personal and memorable.

Finally, don’t forget the deeper reflection. How do you carry the lessons you learned from reading in your daily interactions? Have you changed your habits or behaviors in any way? Did you get involved in a new activity or club as a result? These details are what demonstrate to the admissions officers that you grew and became a better person as a result of reading.

You may have seen other versions of this prompt, which simply ask you what you learned from encountering a differing perspective, but Dartmouth’s is distinct in that admissions officers specifically want you to discuss an experience where you found common ground with the other person. So, as you brainstorm, make sure you’ll be able to incorporate that element.

Now, that certainly doesn’t mean the moment you choose has to be one where you and the other person end up in full agreement.  Rather, reread Jane Goodall’s quote and think about times you made a genuine effort to start a dialogue with someone else, even if the outcome wasn’t perfect harmony.

Your mind might go immediately to contentious political issues, and you can write a strong essay about a topic like racism or immigration reform. But you can also cast a broader net for topics of disagreement. For example, maybe you wanted to go on a road trip by yourself when you were 16, but your parents were concerned about you spending so much time driving so soon after you got your license.

Showing how you navigate differing opinions in more everyday situations can be just as informative for admissions officers as explaining how you do so in more formal contexts, because you won’t just be in class with your Dartmouth peers—you’ll also be living with them, which means many more opportunities to realize how their perspectives diverge from your own.

There is one last, unconventional way you could approach this prompt: with a touch of humor, by discussing a lighthearted topic. For example, maybe you firmly believe “Folklore” is Taylor Swift’s best album, but your friend stands behind “Reputation.” Or maybe you and your dad have drastically different opinions about the best way to develop a young quarterback in the NFL.

While such debates might seem trivial and not serious enough for Dartmouth. In response to that, we would remind you that college applications on the whole can be quite dry affairs, so taking advantage of a more open-ended prompt to add some energy and fun can make you a more memorable candidate. That said, going against the grain takes self-confidence and strong writing abilities—you’ll still need to show why this story means you’d be an asset to the Dartmouth community, after all.

If you aren’t sure you’ll be able to execute an unconventional response to this prompt, we recommend sticking to the more standard path. A traditional essay that’s polished and personal will make a far better impression than an unusual one that’s all over the map.

Once you’ve chosen the situation you want to focus on, you should provide the context of what happened fairly quickly, in roughly 75-100 words. The key to a strong response is not nitty-gritty details about the disagreement itself, but describing what you learned from your experience that you’ll take with you to Dartmouth, so that’s what the majority of your essay should focus on.

As noted above, you also want to be sure that you address the “common ground” component of this prompt. Again, your story doesn’t need to end in sunshine and roses. But your conclusion shouldn’t be just “We realized we simply were never going to agree on this issue, but decided our relationship was strong enough to overcome that difference.”

Here’s an example of a strong response:

In this response, the writer covers the “nuts and bolts” of the initial disagreement—the classic abortion debate—quickly in the first paragraph, then pivots to highlighting the learning moment of this discussion: her starting a dialogue about her friend who had an abortion, and the common ground she unexpectedly found with her great-aunt as a result, around the importance of mothers being supported as they raise their children.

She concludes with a thoughtful reflection on the broader lesson she took away from this experience. And crucially, that lesson is clearly one that will help her be a more engaged, compassionate member of the Dartmouth community.

One last note, on something to avoid: if you write about a contentious political issue, especially one you have very strong opinions about, take care that you don’t come across as condescending or viewing your conversation partner as stupid or prejudiced. 

With this prompt, Dartmouth wants to see that you can handle “a difficult conversation” tactfully and respectfully, and if you frame the other person as backwards or morally inferior to you, that won’t reflect well on your potential as a college student. One easy way to avoid this pitfall is to, as highlighted above, focus more on the “common ground” of the discussion than the disagreement itself, as that will naturally guide your essay in a positive, respectful direction.

If you choose this option, the first thing to ask yourself is how you want to define “nerdy.” Maybe at first, the word conjures up the typical stereotypes, such as liking math or being obsessed with Star Trek. But remember that the point of any college essay is to set yourself apart from other applicants, so leaning too far into the familiar stereotypes might not be your best bet.

Instead, think of some intellectual or “unpopular” (at least for teenagers) interests you have that are unique to you. Here are some examples:

• Classical music
• Bad horror movies
• Norse mythology
• The technology used by the Ancient Romans

Since these things are less commonly talked about in pop culture, they will feel more personal to you, which will, in turn, teach admissions officers more about your personality. Remember, though, that, like with any college essay, choosing your topic is only half the battle. The other half is using that topic as a lens to shine light on particular aspects of your personality, by citing specific experiences or anecdotes that show how your interest in that topic has impacted your growth.

For example, you could write about Yggdrasill, the world tree in Norse mythology, and how the idea of being connected to every part of your world has inspired you to read books from people who are different from you, take road trips, and listen to music in other languages, in an attempt to build that same connection in your own life.

One word of caution: make sure that your response doesn’t become too much about your topic. Particularly if you’re writing about something that you’re truly passionate about, you might accidentally slip into a tangent about, for example, Ancient Roman cranes. While that might be informative, Dartmouth is trying to decide whether or not to accept you, not a crane, so make sure the points you’re making about your topic always connect back to something about you. 

Like Prompt 2, Option A, this is a Diversity essay prompt being presented in slightly different packaging. While that prompt asks you to structure your response around “the environment in which you were raised,” this prompt more traditionally focuses on what makes you different from others.

Keep in mind that “difference” can be a part of your life in a wide variety of ways. Perhaps what makes you different is your race, ethnicity, sexuality, or some other aspect of your identity that typically gets a lot of attention in discussions about difference. But there are plenty of other ways you can be different. For example:

• Having an unusual hobby, like rock climbing or birdwatching
• Speaking a language at home that isn’t the same as your country’s national language
• Being interested in something that teenagers usually aren’t, like opera

Once you’ve identified some way in which you’re different, you want to explain how you have “embraced it as part of your identity and outlook.” In other words, why is it important to understand this aspect of your identity to understand who you are as a whole?

You don’t have a ton of room to do this, but you want to make sure your explanation still connects to anecdotes and examples that illustrate the point you’re trying to make. Otherwise, your reader may be confused about how you got from A to B. For example, compare the following two excerpts from hypothetical responses:

The second response is much longer. But the length is worth it, as we get to see how the writer started to change their mind about birdwatching, and the details we get about that journey make us feel like we’ve gotten to know them much better, which is the whole point of college essays. 

This essay falls into the Overcoming Challenges category. Dartmouth is not asking you to focus on the failure itself, but on your process. How do you approach setbacks, rework things, and improve? Do you keep going when things don’t go smoothly? Are you curious, reflective, and willing to grow rather than avoid risk?

The framing of this Overcoming Challenges question around the Mindy Kaling Theater lab invites a touch of creativity. Acting is all about putting yourself out there, experimenting with different methods, and sometimes coming up short. You don’t have to be an actor or write about an experience on stage though. You can pick just about anything to show you’re not afraid of imperfection for the sake of progress.

Here are some ideas that could make a good essay:

• The app you coded kept experiencing errors. Sometimes it felt like you spent more time debugging existing code than writing new lines, but the experience sharpened your attention to detail and you ended up having more fun being a “detective” to find the errors.

• You love to bake and have always wanted to perfect a pavlova. No matter how many times you tried, your meringue always cracked or deflated. One time though, you realized you failed at making a pavlova but perfected an Eton Mess! You realized failure is just a matter of perspective.

• One time you were on a hike and got your entire family lost because you misread the map. You treated it as a fun adventure and were determined to figure out a way back through trying other trails and reading the topography of the map which you learned about in class. There were a lot of dead ends along the way, but in the end you navigated out of the woods.

When it comes to actually writing the essay, you want to provide clear details to place the reader in the challenge, but don’t dwell on the obstacle you faced too much. The majority of your essay should be dedicated to describing your approach to failure—were you discouraged, did you laugh in the face of adversity, did you turn to others for advice/support, was it exciting to try out different methods, etc.—and reflecting on what you learned from the experience.

You want to demonstrate to Dartmouth that you aren’t the type of person who gives up when things get tough, so try not to be too negative in this essay. Maintain a positive, forward-looking tone, especially by the end of the essay. Show the admissions committee that you can grow and embrace difficulty.

Where to Get Your Dartmouth College Essay Edited For Free

Do you want free, nearly-instantaneous feedback on your Dartmouth essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. So meet Sage, our AI tutor and advisor, who will rate your essay, give you suggestions for improvement, and summarize what admissions officers would take away from your writing. Sage can improve your chances of acceptance to your dream school by helping you show what you have to offer beyond the numbers!