Dartmouth College: Inside the Numbers

Dartmouth has spent the last five years doing something none of its Ivy League peers has done: reversing the test-optional policy adopted during the pandemic. The Fall 2025 entering class was the first since 2019 required to submit an SAT or ACT, and application volume responded, falling from 31,656 in the Fall 2024 cycle to 28,230 in Fall 2025, an 11 percent drop. The admit rate ticked back up to 6.0 percent from 5.4 percent the year before. Yield, already among the strongest in selective higher ed, hit a five-year high of 70.9 percent. The cost of attendance crossed $92,000, the financial aid program expanded, and 98 percent of first-year students still came back for sophomore year.

For families weighing whether to apply, the operative question is not whether Dartmouth has gotten harder to get into. The selectivity numbers have held in a tight 5.4 to 6.4 percent band across the five-year window. The real questions are what the school is looking for, how the underlying dynamics shifted with the testing decision and the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on race-conscious admissions, and what the published data say about which files rise to the top. What follows is a look at the trends that matter most, a section on the mechanics of applying and what Dartmouth’s published admission factors say about how the file is read, and a few observations on what students, families, and counselors should take from the data.

Application volume and selectivity

Dartmouth received 28,230 first-year applications for the Fall 2025 entering class, down from a record 31,656 the previous year. The five-year window opened at 28,356 in Fall 2021, so volume has essentially returned to baseline after a one-year spike. The admit rate has held between 5.4 and 6.4 percent across the period, with the most recent figure at 6.0 percent. This is a school sizing its admitted class to a target rather than chasing volume.

The Fall 2024 application spike is worth reading carefully. That cycle was the last under Dartmouth’s pandemic-era test-optional policy, and prospective applicants knew it. The pool grew about 10 percent year over year, a familiar pattern at schools advertising a final test-optional cycle. The Fall 2025 decline of roughly 11 percent largely undoes that spike, leaving Dartmouth’s underlying application volume close to where it sat at the start of the window.

Source: Dartmouth College Common Data Sets, 2021–22 through 2025–26. “n/r” indicates a CDS field that was not reported.

The waitlist data tells its own story. Dartmouth offered between 2,098 and 2,669 waitlist spots each year, with admissions from the list ranging from 0 to 41 in the four years for which they are disclosed. That works out to roughly 0 to 2 percent of waitlisted students getting an offer, well below the rate at most peer schools and a useful calibration for applicants weighing whether to stay active on the list. The 2025–26 CDS does not publish a waitlist-admit figure for Fall 2025; given the pattern of the prior four cycles, the number is probably small.

Yield: where Dartmouth bucks the trend

Yield is where the most interesting story is happening. Most highly selective colleges and universities have seen yields drop several points over the last five years as the cross-admit pool gets stretched thinner. Dartmouth’s has not. The five-year low was 62.2 percent in Fall 2022, the early-COVID-recovery cycle when many schools saw unusual yield swings. From there, the figure has climbed back to 70.9 percent in Fall 2025, the highest in the window and the highest of any Ivy outside HYP.

A few forces are at work. The Class of 2029 (Fall 2025) was the first admitted under the renewed test requirement, and the smaller, more self-selected pool tilts toward committed applicants who are less likely to be in the running at the top of the cross-admit hierarchy. Dartmouth’s binding ED round, which now accounts for 45 to 64 percent of the entering class depending on the year, locks in a substantial portion of the class regardless of cycle dynamics. And Dartmouth’s distinctive D-Plan quarter calendar (with mandatory sophomore summer in Hanover) appeals to students who specifically want that, less so to students choosing among undifferentiated alternatives.

The implication for applicants is clear: when Dartmouth admits you, the school has good reason to think you are coming. That is part of what makes the binding ED round the most important strategic decision in the Dartmouth application.

Early Decision: roughly half the class, every year

Dartmouth offers a single binding Early Decision plan (no ED II, no Early Action). Applications are due in early November with decisions in mid-December. Five years of ED data show consistent volume growth and a structurally important share of the entering class.

Source: Dartmouth College Common Data Sets, 2021–22 through 2025–26, Section C21. “ED as % of enrolled” assumes a near-100 percent yield from the binding round, the standard pattern at peer institutions.

ED application volume has grown about 33 percent over the five years, from 2,664 to 3,552. That is faster than overall application growth, and it shows up in the ED admit rate, which has tightened from 25.1 percent in Fall 2021 to a five-year low of 19.2 percent in Fall 2024, easing slightly to 21.6 percent in Fall 2025. ED admits, in absolute terms, grew from 669 to 768 over the same period.

More revealing is ED’s share of the entering class. In Fall 2021, ED admits represented about 55 percent of enrolled students. The figure dipped to roughly 50 percent in the next three cycles, then jumped to 64 percent in Fall 2025. Most of the jump in the most recent year reflects two things: Dartmouth admitted more ED students in absolute terms (768, the highest in five years), and the regular round shrank as the test requirement filtered some applicants out of the regular pool. The pool of slots available to regular-decision applicants is considerably smaller than the headline 6 percent admit rate suggests. Of roughly 930 RD admits against an RD pool of about 24,700 applicants in Fall 2025, the implied RD admit rate sits closer to 3.8 percent than 6.

The practical takeaway: if Dartmouth is the clear top choice, apply Early Decision. The math is the math. About one in five ED applicants gets in versus closer to one in twenty-five in regular decision, and some of that gap reflects stronger self-selection in the binding pool (recruited athletes, legacy and development cases, applicants confident enough to commit). But not all of it does. Holding ED back to leave the door open at a peer is usually a strategic mistake when Dartmouth is the first choice. If it is one of several reaches with no clear ranking, applying ED elsewhere, or not applying ED at all, is the more honest call.

Testing policy: the school that came back

Dartmouth went test-optional for applicants to the Classes of 2025 through 2027 (Fall 2021 through Fall 2023), then test-recommended for the Class of 2028 (Fall 2024), then back to required for the Class of 2029 (Fall 2025). The February 2024 announcement made Dartmouth the first Ivy to reinstate testing. The decision was driven by an internal study from Dartmouth economists Bruce Sacerdote, Elizabeth Cascio, and Douglas Staiger and sociologist Michele Tine, which found that test scores helped identify high-achieving applicants from less-resourced high schools whose academic potential might otherwise have been understated by other parts of the application.

Dartmouth did not publish a test-score profile in its CDS during the test-optional and test-recommended years. IPEDS, however, collects score data from all reporting institutions regardless of CDS publication choices, so the score profile of submitters is available across the full five-year window.

Source: Dartmouth College Common Data Set 2025–26 for the most recent year; IPEDS Institutional Characteristics data for 2021–22 through 2024–25, the test-optional and test-recommended period for which Dartmouth did not publish scores in its CDS. SAT composite percentiles for the IPEDS years are computed as the sum of EBRW and Math subject percentiles. The SAT 50th percentile is not collected by IPEDS. SAT and ACT submission rates do not sum to 100 percent because some students submit both.

Two patterns in the score data are worth working through. First, the SAT 25th percentile under the test-required policy (1440 in 2025–26) is actually lower than what was reported through IPEDS during the test-optional years (about 1470 in 2021–22, rising to 1500 in the next three cycles). The ACT 25th percentile shows the same shape: 33 throughout the optional period, dropping to 32 under the requirement. This is a selection effect, not a quality effect. Under test-optional, score submitters were a self-selected subset of mostly high scorers (about 70 percent of enrollees submitted some score across SAT and ACT combined). Under the requirement, that share rises past 100 percent (some students submit both), and the score band widens to reflect the full class, including students whose scores would have sat below the 25th percentile of the optional-era submitter pool.

Second, the score range says something about the breadth of the enrolled class. A 1440 SAT submitter sits at the 25th percentile of the enrolled class, not below it. The 75th percentile is 1550. That 110-point span reflects Dartmouth’s larger enrolled class and broader recruitment territory; applicants whose scores sit in the middle of that range are competitive on the test dimension and need other parts of the file to carry the decision.

For applicants from less-resourced high schools, or contexts where the transcript is hard for an admissions reader in Hanover to calibrate, the test requirement means there is no way to opt out. Dartmouth’s announcement and ongoing communications have been clear that scores will be evaluated against the norms of the applicant’s high school, consistent with how the file has always been read. A 1400 SAT from a high school with a 1000 average reads very differently from a 1400 from a high school with a 1450 average. Families should prepare for the test but understand that absolute thresholds are not the way to think about how Dartmouth is reading the score.

What it actually takes: the C7 factors

The mechanics of the Dartmouth application are straightforward. Students apply through the Common Application or QuestBridge (for low-income applicants), pay an application fee (waivable for financial hardship), and submit a high school transcript, a school report and counselor recommendation, two teacher recommendations, and a peer recommendation (Dartmouth is one of the few schools to strongly encourage this). They write the Common App personal statement plus the Dartmouth supplement, which typically includes a required prompt and one or two shorter prompts that vary year to year. Early Decision applicants submit in early November; Regular Decision applicants in early January. Specific dates and fees change cycle to cycle and should be checked on the admissions website.

The substantive question is what is inside those documents. Section C7 of the Common Data Set, which asks every institution to rate the factors it considers in admission, is where Dartmouth’s admissions philosophy shows up in writing. The 2025–26 filing reads as follows.

Source: Dartmouth College Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7. The list of factors and their ratings have been substantively stable across the five years analyzed, with two exceptions: standardized test scores remained rated Very Important throughout the test-optional period (when scores were submitted), and racial/ethnic status was rated Considered through 2022–23 before being removed from the CDS in 2023–24 following the Supreme Court ruling.

A few points stand out. First, the “Very Important” list is long: eight factors, including the entire academic core plus the essay, recommendations, extracurriculars, and character. The implication is that academic excellence is necessary but not sufficient. A student with a 3.95-plus unweighted GPA, the most demanding curriculum their high school offers, and scores in the middle 50 percent has cleared the baseline. The decision turns on whether the non-academic factors at the top of the list are equally strong in the file.

Second, class rank is rated Very Important, which is distinctive among highly selective schools. The data tracks: Dartmouth’s enrolled cohorts have consistently put 93 to 96 percent of class-rank-reporting students in the top tenth, and 98 to 99 percent in the top quarter. Students at schools that do not rank are not penalized for the absence, but students at schools that do should know that finishing outside the top 5 to 10 percent is a real headwind.

Third, standardized test scores have been rated Very Important throughout the five-year window, including the years Dartmouth was test-optional. In the optional era, scores were rated Very Important when submitted; under the test-required policy effective for Fall 2025, scores became a Very Important data point in every file with no opt-out. Dartmouth’s framing is that scores are weighted in context (high school norms, demographic factors, the opportunity available at the applicant’s high school), not against a fixed cut.

Fourth, the interview is rated Considered. Dartmouth offers alumni interviews when geographically available, and they are informative for students who get one, but they are not determinative, and not every applicant gets one. Students should treat the interview as a useful supplement to the written application, not as a substitute opportunity to make the case.

Fifth, level of applicant’s interest is officially Not Considered. Dartmouth’s admissions office has been clear that demonstrated interest is not formally tracked, though a student’s documented contacts with the school can register unofficially in the file. The practical guidance is the same as at most peer schools that say they do not track interest: a campus visit is not essential, particularly given the cost of getting to Hanover, but it is worth requesting information through the admissions website, registering for a virtual tour or information session, and meeting a Dartmouth representative if one visits the student’s high school. These steps cost little and convey seriousness about the application.

The peer recommendation is Dartmouth-specific. It is a useful place for a friend, teammate, or classmate to add authentic detail that teachers and counselors cannot. Strong peer recs share a quality with strong supplements: they reveal something the rest of the application does not already say. The Dartmouth supplement essays are similarly distinctive. They tend to be shorter (the required “Why Dartmouth” prompt has fluctuated between 100 and 250 words across the window), which means every sentence has to carry weight. The strongest supplements reveal something new and sound like the student rather than a well-coached version of what a student should sound like. The latter is where most applications stumble.

Demographic composition: SFFA shows up in the data

Dartmouth has historically been one of the more demographically diverse Ivies. The five-year CDS data shows the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard registering clearly in the first two post-decision cycles.

Source: Dartmouth College Common Data Sets, 2021–22 through 2025–26, Section B2. Percentages are of first-year enrolled students.

The line worth tracing carefully is Black/African American enrollment. From a steady 6 percent share through Fall 2023, the figure dipped to 5.9 percent in Fall 2024 (the first class admitted under SFFA) and dropped to 4.4 percent in Fall 2025, the lowest in the five-year window and roughly 30 percent below the pre-SFFA baseline. Peer institutions reported a range of post-SFFA outcomes; Yale and Princeton saw smaller drops, MIT and Brown larger ones. Hispanic/Latino enrollment moved less predictably across the period and ended at 9.7 percent in Fall 2025, slightly below the five-year average.

Two other shifts in the most recent year stand out. White enrollment jumped from 41.0 percent in Fall 2024 to 49.8 percent in Fall 2025, almost nine points in a single cycle, the largest year-over-year move in the table. International enrollment dropped from 14.4 percent to 12.8 percent, partly reflecting the changed federal climate for international students applying to U.S. universities. And the share of students declining to disclose race/ethnicity, which spiked to 5.7 percent in Fall 2024 (consistent with applicants holding back on demographic information in the immediate post-SFFA cycle), receded to 1.8 percent in Fall 2025 as the new pattern settled in, which mechanically lifts the identified categories, White among them.

For applicants from underrepresented backgrounds, the takeaway is not to read the recent shifts as evidence that Dartmouth has stopped recruiting URM students. The school’s institutional commitments to access have held: the no-loan financial aid program, the QuestBridge partnership, the expanded zero-parent-contribution threshold, and continued targeted outreach. URM applicants should still apply if Dartmouth is a good fit. The data simply argues for casting a broader net, including peer schools where the post-2023 picture has held up better.

Cost, aid, and what most families actually pay

Dartmouth’s published cost of attendance for Fall 2025 (as reported in the 2024–25 CDS) is approximately $91,935, up about 14 percent across the window, below the rate of cost growth at most peer privates. The figure reported in the 2025–26 CDS for 2026–27 is essentially flat at $92,445, which likely reflects unfinalized 2026–27 numbers at the time of CDS filing rather than a tuition freeze.

Source: Dartmouth College Common Data Sets, 2021–22 through 2025–26, Section G1. Each year’s CDS reports costs for the upcoming academic year.

The sticker is misleading. Dartmouth is one of roughly 20 American colleges practicing full-need, no-loan financial aid for both domestic and international students, and that commitment has held through the entire five-year window. In Fall 2024, the most recent class for which finalized aid data is reported, 55 percent of first-year students received need-based aid, with an average grant of $69,466 and an average package of $71,318. The school meets 100 percent of demonstrated need without loans.

In March 2024, on the strength of a $150 million bequest from alumnus Glenn Britt, Dartmouth raised the income threshold for zero parent contribution from $65,000 to $125,000, effective for the Class of 2028 (Fall 2024 entering class), with the Class of 2029 the second class to benefit. Families earning between $125,000 and $175,000 with typical assets can expect grants covering full tuition, and students below the $125,000 threshold contribute no more than $5,000 a year from summer and campus work. The net price calculator is the right starting point before reacting to the sticker; for most middle-income families, the actual out-of-pocket cost is far below $92,000.

Source: Dartmouth College Common Data Sets, 2021–22 through 2025–26, Section H. First-year cohort figures for aid; graduating-class figures for debt.

The aid program has expanded faster than sticker price. Average grant aid per first-year recipient rose from $63,279 to $71,873 over the window, a 13.6 percent increase against a 14.5 percent rise in COA. The pace of grant expansion will likely accelerate over the next two cycles as the $125,000 threshold flows through more cohorts. Borrowing among graduates remains low. In the most recent CDS, 27 percent of the graduating class left with educational debt, at an average per-borrower cumulative balance of $24,255. That puts Dartmouth among the lower-debt outcomes in selective higher ed, and the share has trended down across the window as the no-loan policy has had more cohorts to work through.

Retention and graduation

First-year retention has hovered between 97.9 and 98.4 percent throughout the period, among the highest figures in American higher education. Six-year graduation rates have ranged from 94 to 96 percent overall, with Pell-recipient sub-rates of 90 to 93 percent.

Source: Dartmouth College Common Data Sets, 2021–22 through 2025–26, Sections B4 and B22.

These are excellent numbers by any national benchmark. The Pell-to-overall graduation-rate gap of three to four points is among the smallest at any highly selective school and reflects Dartmouth’s investment in support for first-generation and Pell students. The most recent graduating class (the Fall 2019 cohort) posted a 95 percent six-year graduation rate, comfortably in the historical range.

Takeaways for applicants and counselors

Dartmouth remains one of the most selective and resource-rich universities in the country, and a hybrid without an exact peer: a research university with a strong liberal arts core, a high-yield Ivy that admits relatively few students, and now the only Ivy that has returned to a test requirement. The five-year CDS data shows an institution whose top-line outputs, selectivity, retention, and graduation, have been remarkably stable while a handful of policy choices produced visible shifts in the pool. Testing is back. The application count returned to baseline after a one-year test-optional final-cycle spike. ED is doing more work than ever, now accounting for more than 60 percent of enrolled first-year students. The demographic composition shifted post-SFFA, more sharply in the most recent cycle than at most peers. The aid program has held its commitment to no loans and full demonstrated need, and the income threshold for zero parent contribution nearly doubled in 2024.

For students and the families and counselors advising them, the data points to a few specific conclusions. Apply Early Decision if Dartmouth is the unambiguous first choice; the boost is real, the binding round fills more of the class every year, and the regular round is functionally tighter than the headline rate suggests. Take the test requirement at face value; there is no opt-out, and Dartmouth has been explicit that scores are weighted against high school norms rather than absolute thresholds. Do not be deterred by the $92,000-plus sticker if family income is in the middle range; the parent contribution for a family earning under $125,000 is zero, with students contributing up to $5,000 a year from work. Take the demographic shifts as context for application strategy, not as a reason to opt out. And look hard at fit, particularly the D-Plan (quarter calendar with mandatory sophomore summer in Hanover) and the remote New Hampshire setting, because that is where most cross-admit decisions ultimately get made.

The Common Data Set is an imperfect instrument. Schools have discretion in how they report categories, the cohorts referenced in different sections do not always align, and small year-to-year moves often reflect reporting changes rather than substantive shifts. Dartmouth’s CDS has been generally consistent across the five years, though the 2025–26 filing leaves some fields blank or pending (notably the 2026–27 cost figures and waitlist details). Where reasonable judgments were involved, this report errs toward the conservative read.