CollegeVine College Essay Team August 23, 2024 22 Dartmouth College,Essay Guides 2024-25

How to Write the Dartmouth College Essays 2024-2025

Dartmouth College has three supplemental essays: one that is required for all applicants, which asks you to explain your motivation for applying to Dartmouth, and two option prompts. The first gives you a choice between two different options, while the second lets you choose between seven prompts.

Since Dartmouth 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 really 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 it’s crucial that everyone has 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 life in college 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 the rest of the essay on, 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 exactly 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 basically 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:

• 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. Basically, 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 clearly 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 background.

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 becoming 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 own 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?

Obviously, 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 really 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.

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 gives you the opportunity 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 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 that you intern at? 

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 an applicant that can connect this back to East-Asian studies or film/production studies 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 is asking 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 Neuroscience major who also has a passion for education and volunteers as an English tutor at a 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 a 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 narrate to the admissions committee how your topic contributes to the betterment of the campus community at Dartmouth and beyond.

This is a somewhat unusual take on the archetypal “Why Major?” essay, which usually just asks you point blank why you want to study your intended major. Instead, this prompt is framed around wondering and thinking, which means Dartmouth is trying to evaluate not only your academic interests, but also your creativity .

In other words, you still want to explain how you first became passionate about your intended major, and how you see yourself further developing that passion at Dartmouth, but you want to do so in a way that highlights your genuine, almost childlike curiosity about this topic. The last thing you want is a dry, formulaic essay that simply states the facts of why you want to study, say, history.

Instead, try to draw an unexpected connection to one of your non-academic hobbies, focus on a niche subfield you’re fascinated by, or describe a particular experience that showcases the wonder this topic evokes in you. 

For example, say you’re planning on majoring in history, and you also love the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. You might talk about how watching these movies inspired you to learn more about colonization in the Caribbean, and about how folk tales survived even as the ruling powers tried to stamp out local tradition.

Or, maybe you’re a prospective engineering student who’s also an avid rock climber. You could describe how your knowledge of leverage has given you the confidence to conquer climbs that you would have thought were far beyond your physical abilities.

If you’re undecided about what you want to study, that’s okay. Dartmouth isn’t asking you to lock into anything right now–they’re just asking you to “imagine” an “anticipated major.” So, pick something that genuinely interests you, and that will allow you to get imaginative, rather than stressing about the subject itself. Alternatively, you could always pick one of the other prompts!

Once you’ve selected a topic, make sure that in addition to being unconventional in how you present it, you’re also honest. You don’t have to make up some dramatic narrative to impress the admissions committee. In fact, that approach simply comes across as inauthentic most of the time. Instead, simply be true to yourself and show Dartmouth the intricacies of how your brain functions.

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 ended 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 definitely 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, college applications are quite dry affairs overall, and taking advantage of a more open-ended prompt to add some energy and fun can actually 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 actually 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 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 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 in order 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:

Obviously, 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 is a good example of the phenomenon in college essays where the most direct prompts can sometimes be the most difficult to brainstorm for. There is no mystery about what Dartmouth is asking you here: what does being a great person mean to you? But pinning down an idea as philosophical as greatness can be tough.

Fortunately, the rest of Coach Teevens’ quote offers a lifeline. He specifies that in academic contexts, your goal is to be a great student, while when you’re engaging in extracurriculars, your goal is to be a great athlete, artist, debater, etc. So, when he says that you should be “a great person all of the time,” he’s talking about the times when you aren’t engaged in any formal commitment, like class or an activity. 

He’s talking about the times when you’re a friend, or a roommate, or when you see someone looking lost in the dining hall. The residential college experience is full of moments like these, and Dartmouth wants to know what your values are when there’s no external standard, like a rubric or a scoreboard, to follow.

Like with any other college essay, you’ll want to be sure to include examples that concretely illustrate your points. With that in mind, there are a couple of ways you can go about brainstorming:

• Come up with a list of values, personality traits, beliefs, etc. that you want to highlight, and then think of examples that showcase those things
• Come up with a list of experiences from your everyday life (ie, not in a structured setting) that have been meaningful to you, and then analyze them to see what they show about you

With the first approach, maybe you consider yourself to be an extremely thoughtful gift-giver, and think of a time or two where one of your gifts really raised someone’s spirits. Alternatively, maybe you believe in the importance of being kind to animals, and write about setting up a bird feeder for the doves that would always gather outside your window.

Or, for the second approach, maybe you think about the time you had to spend the night in the hospital because of a blood issue, and about the road trip you took by yourself on Route 66, and connect these experiences by reflecting on the importance of being grateful for what you have, and taking advantage of all life has to offer.

There is no one right answer here, so make sure you focus on identifying what truly matters to you, not what you think Dartmouth wants to hear. The other pitfall you want to avoid is being redundant with something you’ve already shared in another essay–if your personal statement is about teamwork, this response shouldn’t be about how being a great person means knowing how to work with others. You only get so many opportunities to share yourself with admissions officers, so don’t waste one of them by repeating yourself.

As long as you avoid those two common mistakes, once you’re done brainstorming, the actual writing should be fairly easy. Just make sure that, as noted above, your points are always supported by anecdotes and reflections from your own life, as otherwise, you run the risk of your essay sounding generic. 

Compare the following two excerpts from hypothetical essays about the birdfeeder example to see what we mean:

Although the sentiment in these two examples is the same, in the second the writer truly lets us inside their head, to show us how they came to value the lives of non-human animals, and to integrate this value into their broader worldview of the balance between power and responsibility. They portray themselves not only as an animal lover, but also as a deep thinker who can critically evaluate the world around them–aka, exactly the kind of student Dartmouth admissions officers are looking to accept.

Where to Get Your Dartmouth College Essay Edited For Free

Do you want feedback on your Dartmouth essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool, where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

Need feedback faster? Get a free, nearly-instantaneous essay review from Sage, our AI tutor and advisor. Sage will rate your essay, give you suggestions for improvement, and summarize what admissions officers would take away from your writing. Use these tools to improve your chances of acceptance to your dream school!