Recruiting Intellects

"I'm going to get a green one if I get into Dartmouth." From a conversation overheard between two teenage boys at a pierced-earring display, New York Times, April 27, 1988.

Last spring, as part of an effort to inject more intellectual vigor into the student body, the College offered 187 of the top high school students in the country a free trip to campus. The students, who had been accepted at Dartmouth but had not made their final choice of schools, were declared "Presidential Scholars" by the College. "We have actively recruited athletes for years and, of course, those efforts continue," President James O. Freedman said. "Now we want to invest the same energy in bringing the most intellectually ambitious students to the College."

Eighty-one students took advantage of the program, funded by donations from Kenneth Montgomery '25 and John Rosenwald '52 TU '53. Thirty-eight of the visitors eventually decided to enroll at Dartmouth. A similar offer was made to 21 candidates for graduate programs, and seven ultimately elected to matriculate at the College.

Efforts to meet the president's challenge began even before the program was launched. Admissions targeted 211 of the academically top students among the record-setting 10,250 applications for the class of 1992. Ten of these students accepted early-decision offers. Four foreign students in the target group also chose Dartmouth. In addition, of the 201 applicants pegged as "intellectually ambitious," 63 decided to enroll.

"The effort seems to have paid off with a significant increase in Dartmouth's share of the most highly sought students," said Richard Jaeger '59, director of Admissions.

Efforts to recruit more women undergraduates including personal phone calls to 500 applicants by current female students boosted the proportion of women in the incoming class to 44 percent, five points ahead of the class of 1991.

In addition, a five-year-old minority-recruitment program brought 128 black applicants to campus for a weekend in the spring. Admissions officers expect minorities to make up more than 20 percent of the projected 1,100 in the class of 1992, up several percentage points from last year.

Meadows added that the undergraduate exchange is the first such program with an environmental focus.

Honored guest: Actress Liv Ullmann spoke to classes and received a tribute fromthe Dartmouth Film Society.