Acceptance Rate Lowest in College History

The Dartmouth class of 2023 is the most selective in its history, with only 7.9 percent of applicants admitted to the College on the Hill, a decrease of 0.8 percent from the class of 2022. Of the 1,876 students admitted to Dartmouth, a record 16 percent are first-generation, while 51 percent identify as people of color, and ninety-two applicants were accepted to Dartmouth through QuestBridge, a program for low-income students which “matches” students with institutions of higher education based on academic performance and interests. The average scholarship received by admitted students is fifty-three thousand dollars, also a record for Dartmouth, and 17 percent of students are eligible for federal Pell Grants. Nine percent of admitted students are legacies, the lowest of any Ivy. In purely academic terms, admits for the class of 2023 had a mean SAT score of 1501 out of 1600, also the highest in Dartmouth’s History.

On April 4^th, the College also announced plans to alter its admissions practices for student-athlete applicants in response to “Operation Varsity Blues,” a federal investigation which revealed widespread admissions fraud in which wealthy parents conspired with former college counselor Mark Riddell to boost their children’s test scores and fraudulently claimed their children were involved in sports which they did not play. Fifty people, including actresses Lori Loughlin (“Full House”) and Felicity Huffman (“Desperate Housewives”), were arrested in connection with the scheme and many of the schools allegedly targeted as part of Riddell’s operation, including Yale and the University of Southern California, announced reviews of their admissions process in response to the scandal. While Dartmouth was not mentioned in the federal indictment of Riddell and his co-conspirators and has denied any involvement in the scandal, the College still announced plans to ensure that all student-athletes applying to Dartmouth were legitimate athletic recruits capable of playing an NCAA Division I sport. Starting with the class of 2024, candidates for admission will have their athletic credentials reviewed by a College administrator in order to ensure that coaches had not recommended an unqualified candidate. Diana Lawrence, a spokeswoman for Dartmouth, insisted that such measures were cautionary and that within the last three years for which data was available no Dartmouth coach had been found to have recommended an inapt student-athlete for admission.