Admission Month
The lights have been burning late in the Admissions Office, and nocturnal labors there will continue through most of April as Director of Admissions Albert I. Dickerson 'go and his assistants work toward their target date of April 26. That is the date on which they hope to mail out notifications to the hundreds of boys who have applied for admission to the Class of 1956 at Dartmouth.
The admission letters are going out about ten days later than last year because of the new requirement that all applicants take the College Board scholastic aptitude tests. The test results will not reach Hanover until the middle of the month, which means that some strenuous and concentrated work will be called for if the April 26 target date is to be met. Financial aid notices will also go out at that time.
Dartmouth this year is a party to an Ivy League agreement that boys granted ad mission will have until May 19 to make their decisions about acceptance. This agreement has made it unnecessary for Dartmouth to continue the requirement that each acceptance be accompanied by a cash deposit toward the first year's charges in order to make the acceptance a firm one. In previous years, when Dartmouth did not require the College Board tests, its admission notices went out earlier than those of most other colleges. This permitted some boys, looking for admission insurance, to send their acceptance to Dartmouth and then to drop out later when they had received word of admission to their first-choice colleges. The deposit plan was necessary to protect the College from this "playing of the field," but now that applicants will have the admission verdicts from all eight Ivy League colleges at approximately the same time and will have the same acceptance deadline for the whole group, there is no reason to expect that any acceptance will not be a firm and honestly intentioned one. The fact that about 75 other colleges have also joined this spreading agreement is additional guarantee that the choices of the men of 1956 will be genuine. Of interest in connection with admission procedures this year is the elimination from the College Board tests of the requirement that the candidate state his first choice among the colleges.
The new freshman class to be admitted by Dartmouth is expected to be somewhat smaller than the record class of 760 men that matriculated last fall. If the Class of 1956 comes out at the figure being aimed at, it will probably number not much over 700 men. The competition for these places is up to the level of the past two years, according to Mr. Dickerson, and any boy who receives a favorable admission letter around April 26 ought to realize that his place in the Class of 1956 represents the unfulfilled desire of a lot of fine candidates.
