Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire · Founded 1769
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SAT / ACT required
Standardized testing is a required part of Dartmouth's application and scores are superscored. Students who attended high school in the United States must send the SAT or ACT. Students schooled outside the U.S. may instead send three AP exams, IB Diploma results, A-Levels, or a national exam. There is no minimum score. Source: admissions.dartmouth.edu (verified September 2026).
About
Dartmouth is the smallest of the Ivy League universities and the one most openly organized around undergraduates. It keeps the word College in its name on purpose: professors who lead research also teach first-year seminars, and the graduate schools sit alongside the undergraduate program rather than above it.
History
Chartered in 1769 by King George III, Dartmouth is the ninth-oldest college in the United States. Its charter survived a landmark 1819 Supreme Court case, Dartmouth College v. Woodward, which established that a state could not simply take over a private charter - a decision still cited in American corporate law.
What stands out
- The D-Plan: a year-round quarter calendar students build themselves
- Thayer School of Engineering, open to undergraduates
- One of the few Ivy League schools organized around undergraduate teaching
- A 4,500-acre Second College Grant in northern New Hampshire
- Baker-Berry Library and the Hood Museum of Art at the center of campus
Popular majors
Campus life
Nearly everyone lives on campus, in a house community students join for their whole time here. The outdoors is part of daily life - the Dartmouth Outing Club is the oldest and largest collegiate outing club in the country - and the D-Plan sends most students off campus for at least one term.