Sounding Out the Ought Cubed

We sent out an e-mail questionnaire to a randomly selected tenth of the class of 2000 to get a feel for the students individually. (We offered them a free T-shirt as incentive. Freshmen go for that sort of thing.) Their answers were reassuring; they sounded like freshmen. Some admitted to being a little lonely, a few, painfully homesick. Nearly all talked about how beautiful this place is; most said the campus visit was big in helping them make their decision.

Although the admissions officers say they zeroed in on the more focused students, "well-roundedness" was the biggest reason these students thought Dartmouth had for choosing them. When Aaron Fischman was asked why he thought Dartmouth accepted him, he answered, disarmingly, "Cuz I'm a nice guy." Conor Brooks said, "Because I can swing a bat, throw a ball, and sometimes run while I do it."

No survey to freshmen is complete without a squirrelly question. Ours requested the students to describe "an epiphany: a moment when you realized some profound wisdom in life." Most of the freshmen sounded like, well, freshmen, recounting incidents that happened very recently. "The DOC trip and the Ravine Lodge," answered Benjamin Berk. "I realized that I had finally arrived home." "Walking onto Dartmouth for the first time," said Carmen Flores. "I realized I was actually starting life." Allison Thomas received her epiphany farther from campus, "after a conversation with a homeless man in the streets of London." Matthew Babineau found his during two rainforest expeditions. "My mind was opened and my desire to learn became fueled by an intense desire to help the world," he told us. Aliette Frank received her epiphany spending two months on the Juneau ice field in Alaska, when she realized "that ice fields lack adequate coverage for nature calls."

Contributors: Tyler Stabkford '96, Heather KiHebrew '89, and Sheila Ctilbert.