It is late at night, and I am sitting on a ghastly floral comforter in the dim light of a hotel room’s bedside lamp, holding a syringe and a tiny bottle. Four years ago while visiting family in Atlanta, my little sister xxxxx was diagnosed with type 1 juvenile diabetes. She was hospitalized with a blood glucose level over 1400 and began taking insulin by injection about eight times a day. A typical squeamish seventh grader, I was having no part...

Hideous—that’s how I would describe the day I visited Northwestern. I arrived on campus during a rain shower, and an annoying, incessant drizzle continued into the beginning of the tour. Twenty minutes after the rain ended, the temperature had climbed well over ninety degrees. Standing by the lake in the scorching sun, lost in a gaggle of visitors dripping with sweat, I could think only one thought: “I love it.” Northwestern had blown me away. And, okay, I...

Dartmouth is known for Greek life, and by far the two most dominant spheres on campus are the Greek system and the DOC (Dartmouth Outing Club). There's a...

outdoorsy, athletic,...

Interviewing with Dartmouth is always with alumni; my interviewer asked really standard questions and just wanted to get to know the basics about me, but was overall really...

I receive a significant amount of need-based financial aid and chose to pay a relatively small amount of money (compared to 60k) to attend Dartmouth over Kenyon, where I would have basically made money going to school, as well as over Cornell and...

Dartmouth gets made fun of for being in the middle of nowhere, for being really cold, for being an enclave of binge drinking, etc. Those things are all true to some extent. Location wise, I love the isolation. I love that we're essentially a boarding school--the school exists largely in and of itself;...

The best class I've taken at Dartmouth was a topics course in the Classics department on Corinth and Sparta; the class was co-taught by the Greek archaeologist and historian of the department, an interesting duo--the archaeologist was actually the historian's professor at Dartmouth, and one handed down leadership of the study abroad program to the other, so it was a really interesting and funny dynamic. Both professors were known on campus for being great, engaging lecturers and genuinely caring...

If I could change one thing about Dartmouth, it would be dining services. The problem isn't that the food is bad--I actually think a lot of it is quite good--it's simply overpriced. Products are frequently sold around 400% markups, even though Dartmouth Dining Services is allegedly not for profit. The math really doesn't work out, and students are required to buy meal plans,...

People at Dartmouth are extremely future oriented and professionally focused. There's a chance I wasn't aware of this because of my background--"banking" is not really a professional career where I come from. Econ and government are incredibly popular and common majors, and most of the people studying in those departments are aiming to work in finance, consulting, and sales...

I would spend less time and money applying to safety schools and more applying to more elite schools I would have seriously considered. I knew I was a competitive applicant, but I'm a terrible decision maker and kept flip-flopping on what I wanted in a school--I could go to a top-ranked university with...

It is my strong, strong opinion that summer activities during high school are not incredibly important. For my first three summers, I did nothing but go to a few tennis clinics a week. Unless you truly have a burning desire to study a specific topic at one of those summer university programs, just DON'T waste your time and money. Enjoy being young, hang out with friends, and try to get a job to make some money! I did volunteer at a hospital a few hours a few before senior year of high school--I was also playing tennis 5 days/week that...

Honestly, I think that my geographical and personal background--rural, not that wealthy--largely set me apart. I had a really strong overall application: high GPA, valedictorian, 99th percentile test scores, involved in academic, service, civic, and athletic activities. A ton of...

At the end of my application process, I was either going to go to Northwestern, Kenyon, or Dartmouth (and maybe Cornell, but they were just a more-expensive Dartmouth). Going to Kenyon would not have cost me a dime, but it was less than an hour from my house which felt like a cop-out for a "college experience," it didn't have the sort of research and institutional resources I felt I could...

I plan to take a gap year while I apply to medical school, which I hope to enter in the fall of 2018. During that gap year, I hope to work either in a research laboratory or in a...

While Dartmouth was the best bang for my buck, it also provided the best combination of cohesive community, college experience, tradition, academic and extracurricular resources, and prestige that I knew I really wanted. It was (and still is)...

Pick your absolute dream school, pick no more than 3 safeties--which should always be schools you would actually go to, then pick at least 3 schools you will probably get into, then pick as many "reach" schools as you can 1) pay to apply to and 2) write good essays for. Don't overstretch yourself--I applied to 15 schools, which is a...

I have been most involved in research in my time at Dartmouth; as a freshman, I got an internship in a physics lab through the Women in Science Program, which pays freshmen (and some sophomore) women to work in science-related fields during the winter and spring terms of their freshmen years. I did classics research (on textiles) my junior year through another program, and I've taken two leave terms to work full...

Dartmouth is uniquely steeped in tradition. While it's not all great and some of it is inherently sexist and racist--we didn't let women in until the late 70s--most of it is harmless and contributes to a fully immersive and collegiate experience. Dartmouth's culture is one of tradition: the oldest outing club and largest outdoor freshman orientation program, sophomore summer (when all sophomores...