Calling all Dartmouth pre-meds

[biggreen11]

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Hi I'm a Dartmouth '11, and I was wondering what current students have to say about the pre-med program and advising at Dartmouth.

Are the classes hard to manage if I want to major in something like economics? Are the pre-med advisors good? Does anyone have acceptance rate statistics for Dartmouth pre-meds? Professors to avoid/seek?

Would appreciate any help. Thanks.

 

[Karina 07]

Hi I'm a Dartmouth '11, and I was wondering what current students have to say about the pre-med program and advising at Dartmouth.

Are the classes hard to manage if I want to major in something like economics? Are the pre-med advisors good? Does anyone have acceptance rate statistics for Dartmouth pre-meds? Professors to avoid/seek?

Would appreciate any help. Thanks.

Econ is pretty easy.

Don't rely on the pre-med advice at career services too much. My boyf did that, and they just kept telling him to keep revising his essay, and keep revising, and keep revising and coming back, and then one day out of the blue announced "whoops, it's too late, don't even bother applying." Yea, they clearly told him jack**** about the process. They totally ruined that year for him. He thought he was doing well, asking them for advice and all....

 

[biggreen11]

Thanks Karina. Anyone else?

 

[qtrlifecrisis]

bump..i know someone who is also enrolling at dartmouth in the fall, and she would like these questions answered too.

are there NO dartmouth students on these forums? 😕

 

[chickenlittle84]

I didn't go to dartmouth, but my boyfriend did. He has been pretty happy with the advising process so far - he didn't really tap into it until a couple of months ago when he was ready to start applying, and basically made course selections, etc, on his own. I think there is some turnover in the advising office, though, so the information people can give you on past experiences with advising may not be relevant anymore...

 

[Karina 07]

I didn't go to dartmouth, but my boyfriend did. He has been pretty happy with the advising process so far - he didn't really tap into it until a couple of months ago when he was ready to start applying, and basically made course selections, etc, on his own. I think there is some turnover in the advising office, though, so the information people can give you on past experiences with advising may not be relevant anymore...

My boyf's thing with the advising office was last year. Personally, though, I wouldn't trust anything coming from them, because through friends I've heard stories of almost half a dozen really incompetent people -- e.g. people who applied for scholarships that required the office's help who were LIED to and were told something was mailed off when it wasn't and then missed the deadline, and so on. Lied to, point blank. God. Clearly, this does not necessarily reflect on whoever is doing pre-med advising at the moment; but having not yet heard a happy story coming out of that office, aside from yours, I would still hesitate to trust them that much. In my boyf's year, they clearly didn't even have a good idea of how the timeline worked, which is the most fundamental kind of thing imaginable... it was really beyond belief.

 

[stbxTechie]

Hi I'm a Dartmouth '11, and I was wondering what current students have to say about the pre-med program and advising at Dartmouth.

Are the classes hard to manage if I want to major in something like economics? Are the pre-med advisors good? Does anyone have acceptance rate statistics for Dartmouth pre-meds? Professors to avoid/seek?

Would appreciate any help. Thanks.

I'm a Dartmouth alumn, but wasn't premed at the time. Several of my friends were premed, and seemed pretty happy with the advising - although I don't have a sense how much of that was formal advising through career services vs. informal peer advising through the campus's premed student organization (Nathan Smith Society?) which they were most of them involved in.

A lot of premeds major in things other than the hard sciences, and at least as of when I was there (I was a '98, which was the first year under the then-new curriculum) it was not that hard to get a non-science major done and do the prereqs because you could use major classes to cover the distributive requirements. Any of the social sciences, Economics included, will be good for that.

As for professors to recommend, you might look to see if Ken Korey is still teaching in Anthropology; he did the biological anthropology classes which attracted a lot of premeds and were very interesting... he's a heck of a teacher. He's still on their web page, so hopefully he hasn't retired yet.

Last piece of advice: Dartmouth is a very easy place to get very into the campus social life and party yourself into a ****ty GPA during your first year. I did, and wasn't alone in it. I hope you can learn from that example and have a bit more willpower.

 

[biggreen11]

Thanks for the input so far. Anyone else who's currently at Dartmouth or has graduated recently? Is it a bad idea to take honors intro to chem (chem 10), and honors physics I (physics 15) my first term?

How hard are the non-honors intro classes like chem 5 and bio 12? Are they "weeders"?

Also, does Dartmouth have any global health projects? I think I'd like to learn more about those once I get to campus..thanks for all your help.

 

[ChickFingaz]

Thanks for the input so far. Anyone else who's currently at Dartmouth or has graduated recently? Is it a bad idea to take honors intro to chem (chem 10), and honors physics I (physics 15) my first term?

How hard are the non-honors intro classes like chem 5 and bio 12? Are they "weeders"?

Also, does Dartmouth have any global health projects? I think I'd like to learn more about those once I get to campus..thanks for all your help.

Dartmouth 06 here.

I would strongly advise that you reconsider your first term courseload. If nothing else, just to see how you adjust to trimesters. Although we operate on trimesters, we don't really do less work than a semester, it's just compressed. And you'll be in honors courses as well, so there will be an added degree of difficulty. I've heard great things about Chem 10, so I would go with that. But I would honestly try to avoid doubling up on the sciences in the first term.


Your first term at Dartmouth will be a really exciting one and you want to be sure you get off on the right foot. Take one of the sciences, take something in your major, and take something ridiculous just for the fun of it.

As far as your major choice, pick something you love. It goes a long way towards taking the edge off, when you have a chem exam or a physics exam coming up. I was an English and Creative Writing major. I didn't take any econ courses, but I've heard mixed reviews. One of my friends majored in Econ and it was very easy for her. English courses however, were not her friend. You have to really go with what fits for you. I probably wouldn't have done too hot in Econ, as I didn't have a passion for it, so I stayed away from it. I remember people saying early on during Freshman and Sophomore year, that the intro Econ courses are really challenging. After that it supposedly gets better.

Congrats on your acceptance though.

I loved my four years at Dartmouth. I'd do it again in a heart beat.

Go on a D.O.C. Trip!

OK. I'm done.

 

[Karina 07]

Dartmouth 06 here.

I would strongly advise that you reconsider your first term courseload. If nothing else, just to see how you adjust to trimesters. Although we operate on trimesters, we don't really do less work than a semester, it's just compressed. And you'll be in honors courses as well, so there will be an added degree of difficulty. I've heard great things about Chem 10, so I would go with that. But I would honestly try to avoid doubling up on the sciences in the first term.


Your first term at Dartmouth will be a really exciting one and you want to be sure you get off on the right foot. Take one of the sciences, take something in your major, and take something ridiculous just for the fun of it.

As far as your major choice, pick something you love. It goes a long way towards taking the edge off, when you have a chem exam or a physics exam coming up. I was an English and Creative Writing major. I didn't take any econ courses, but I've heard mixed reviews. One of my friends majored in Econ and it was very easy for her. English courses however, were not her friend. You have to really go with what fits for you. I probably wouldn't have done too hot in Econ, as I didn't have a passion for it, so I stayed away from it. I remember people saying early on during Freshman and Sophomore year, that the intro Econ courses are really challenging. After that it supposedly gets better.

Congrats on your acceptance though.

I loved my four years at Dartmouth. I'd do it again in a heart beat.

Go on a D.O.C. Trip!

OK. I'm done.

I would agree on taking a light course load in freshman fall.

Most people I know would agree with this. Most people did badly.

I myself had my worst grades there, needlessly. Absolutely needlessly. And if I had just waited a term and adjusted, I could've gotten the extra 0.02 I needed to push my GPA over a certain line... oh well.

Start slowwwwww... you can always get there in the end and add more/harder classes when you're accustomed to the place....