>>11631963How to pass? Like how to come off as someone who deserves to be there, or do you mean how to pass your classes?
I'm a Dartmouth '15, in my experience there is really no social convention that defines those who fit in at the school. There were savants, over achieving girls with no social life, drunks, pot heads, musicians, theater people, frat stars, athletes, computer science autists, and a large number of driven regular people. It is just a normal campus, the major difference being you'll have a lot of friends who go on to have significant career success largely due to their Ivy League education. I suppose you'll also run into a lot of people with houses on Nantucket or St. Barts, but that is really only a barrier if you're trying to break into a secret society or certain fraternity.
The classes were not all that challenging, like most universities the difficulty of your course load depends on your major, the effort you're willing to put in, the relationship you have with your educators, etc. I did Stats and Economics, and would maybe dedicate 25 hours a week to my studies outside of class. Ultimately, I carried a 3.8-something, phi-beta kappa, and so on. I knew plenty of kids who did minimal work and squeaked through with sub 2.5 GPAs. But, they graduated, and all the same they ended up at Booz Allen, McKinsey, Oliver Wyman, or wherever making $120,000 a year.
