Dartmouth Essays 2025-2026
If you are applying to Dartmouth for regular decision, you are in the right place. In this article, we will cut through the ambiguity and noise surrounding how to approach Dartmouth’s 2025-2026 supplemental essays, enabling you to show the university how you will both benefit from its extensive offerings and enrich the academic and social experience of your peers, two of the main factors Dartmouth and other elite colleges consider when evaluating applicants.
1. Required of all applicants. Please respond in 100 words or fewer: As you seek admission to Dartmouth's Class of 2030, what aspects of the college's academic program, community, and/or campus environment attract your interest? How is Dartmouth a good fit for you?
For this essay, write a hypothetical scenario in which you explicitly show the reader how you would engage with opportunities at Dartmouth that interest you. Show yourself conducting research with professors, name them specifically, and discuss special classes associated with unique academic programs. Also, show yourself contributing to student organizations and attending events at research centers on campus. Make sure your engagement aligns with a singular objective and goal of yours. As you show the reader how you envision interacting with these meaningful opportunities at Dartmouth, reflect on how your specific experiences, interests, and values are leading you to engage with Dartmouth in the ways you describe.
Required of all applicants, please respond to one of the following prompts in 250 words or fewer:
2a. There is a Quaker saying: Let your life speak. Describe the environment in which you were raised and the impact it has had on the person you are today.
Whatever you do, don’t try to tell your whole life story in just 250 words, that will only produce a watered-down mess. Instead, open with a vivid depiction of a seminal experience in your life, one that set you on the path toward developing a perspective that will allow you to contribute meaningfully to the intellectual diversity and vibrancy of Dartmouth’s incoming class. Then, show how that perspective evolved as you gained further experiences and took actions shaped by that worldview, actions that reflect who you are at your core. Conclude with a clear, vivid picture of who you are today and how that perspective informs the way you understand the environment in which you grew up. The key is to demonstrate that your lived experiences will enable you to bring something distinctive to Dartmouth and enrich the community as a whole.
2b. "Be yourself," Oscar Wilde advised. "Everyone else is taken." Introduce yourself.
Whatever you do, don’t start by saying, “Hi, my name is [insert actual name].” If you can think of a creative pseudonym that captures who you are as a person, that could serve as a compelling hook. The key for this essay is, again, to show how you will make Dartmouth a more interesting place. You should discuss some of your core beliefs, the experiences that led you to develop those beliefs, and how those beliefs shape the way you interact with others. In that sense, this prompt is very similar to the previous one.Required of all applicants, please respond to one of the following prompts in 250 words or fewer:
3a. What excites you?
In terms of what excites you, your answer should focus on either an academic subject, an act of creativity, or creating a tangible positive impact on others. Write vividly, in the first-person perspective, showing the reader what it looks and feels like when you are fully engaged in this exciting pursuit. You should also show them the lived experiences that shaped your motivation and made this pursuit meaningful to you.
Part of your goal is to make the reader feel that excitement as well. If you choose an academic subject, you must convince them that the world genuinely needs someone, specifically you, to study it. If you choose to write about creating tangible positive impact, discuss the barriers you face and show the reader why Dartmouth is the place that can give you the opportunity and tools to dismantle those barriers. If you write about an act of creativity, persuade the reader that the world needs more people engaging deeply in this creative endeavor, and explain why Dartmouth’s resources would allow you to pursue this work, or something in the spirit of it, at a high level.
Conclude the essay with a vivid depiction of how this exciting pursuit can meaningfully impact the world, or reflect on how pursuing it at Dartmouth will recontextualize the original experiences that sparked your passion in the first place.
3b. Labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta recommended a life of purpose. "We must use our lives to make the world a better place to live, not just to acquire things," she said. "That is what we are put on the earth for." In what ways do you hope to make—or are you already making—an impact? Why? How?
I would open this essay with a vivid, first-person description of either an experience in your life that motivates you to make a particular impact, or a moment that shows how you are already making an impact. For this essay, “impact” means tangibly improving the life of a real human being. Increasing shareholder profit is technically a form of “impact,” but not the kind that will persuade an admissions officer.
After your hook, you should either demonstrate how you explored the academic side of the impact your lived experiences inspire, such as studying the physics of solar panels if you want to reduce pollution, or explain why you are currently doing the work you’re doing, and what you are learning from it that is shaping your future goals.
If you haven’t made an impact yet, consider small actions you’ve taken, such as explaining a physics concept to someone, helping someone with their homework, or raising awareness of a seldom-discussed issue during an in-class presentation. Citing examples like these would be beneficial for this essay, followed by articulating the impact you hope to achieve in pursuing a specific career.
You should conclude this essay with a vivid picture of how you plan to make a positive impact on the world using your Dartmouth education.
3c. In an Instagram post, best-selling British author Matt Haig cheered the impact of reading. "A good novel is the best invention humans have ever created for imagining other lives," he wrote. How have you experienced such insight from reading? What did you read and how did it alter the way you understand yourself and others?
If you choose this prompt, it’s completely fine to write about something you read for school, but referencing something you explored independently is even better. Don’t summarize the book or waste space quoting it. Instead, explain in your own words what you read and why it mattered to you. To keep the essay from sounding like a book report, weave in elements of your lived experiences, experiences that made you especially receptive to finding the text insightful.
Describe, in vivid detail, how what you read influenced your actions: how you interact with others, the academic interests you developed, the research projects you initiated, or the extracurriculars you pursued. Conclude by showing what you did as a result of that insight deepen your understanding of it or caused you to reinterpret what that insight means to you today.
3d. The social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees have been the focus of Dame Jane Goodall's research for decades. Her understanding of animal behavior prompted the English primatologist to see a lesson for human communities as well: "Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right." Channel Dame Goodall: Tell us about a moment when you engaged in a difficult conversation or encountered someone with an opinion or perspective that was different from your own. How did you find common ground?
There are two ways to start this essay. The first is a strong personal anecdote in the first person that establishes a connection to whatever topic you will reveal later in the essay that you strongly disagreed about. The second is to describe how you felt when this person disagreed with you. Ideally, the person you are disagreeing with in this essay should be a fellow peer, because in college, that will be primarily who you'll be having disagreements with.
The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate to admissions officers that you are someone who will benefit from being part of an intellectually vibrant and diverse community where disagreements are bound to happen, and that when disagreements emerge, both parties, even if their minds don't change, end up becoming more educated as a result.
After your hook, either explain the nature of the disagreement, making it clear what you were disagreeing about, or provide a personal reason why this disagreement was something you couldn't just let slide. For the remainder of the essay, you want to show the disagreement in detail and explain to the reader how both parties learned something from it, especially what you learned. You want to give them a specific, tangible lesson that you gained from the experience.
To conclude, reflect on either how this disagreement has impacted your goals and aspirations or how it makes you recontextualize the events in your life that made you emotionally invested in the outcome of this disagreement.
3e. Celebrate your nerdy side.
I would dedicate this essay to “nerding out” about a single topic or subject area. Feel free to use technical language, but if you do, make sure the reader can feel your enthusiasm. Your use of technical language should help you make a deeper, more meaningful point about the subject you’re exploring. In this essay, include not just your thoughts on the topic but also the lived experiences that shaped your curiosity, moments when engaging with this subject made you feel alive, gave your life meaning, or allowed you to make a tangible impact on others.
A key part of this essay is helping the reader celebrate your intellectual side. You want them to genuinely want you to study this subject at Dartmouth. To do that, balance your passion for the topic with an awareness of the broader world, show that your fascination is connected to real people, real problems, or real growth. Make sure your personal reasons for loving this subject are compelling and cheer-worthy.
3f. "It's not easy being green…" was the frequent refrain of Kermit the Frog. How has difference been a part of your life, and how have you embraced it as part of your identity, outlook, or sense of purpose?
This prompt is straight from Hegel. In this essay, you want to highlight your understanding of the importance of difference. Show how difference is the genesis of new and novel ideas, ideas that humanity needs to tackle its biggest problems and answer its oldest unanswered questions. Focus on life experiences where differences led to fruitful, positive outcomes. Think of moments when being different sparked intellectual conversations you otherwise wouldn’t have had, discussions that broadened both your horizons and those of the person you were speaking with.
Reflect on how being around diverse people fostered your growth. Explain how you learned that your identity is shaped through others, that your identity only fully makes sense in the context of your growth, a growth made possible through interaction with people who are different from you or who see aspects of you differently than they see themselves.
If being distinctively different has been challenging, show how you overcame those challenges, how they contributed to your development, and how your difference did not distance you from yourself but instead helped you become more fully who you are.
3g. The Mindy Kaling Theater Lab will be an exciting new addition to Dartmouth's Hopkins Center for the Arts. "It's a place where you can fail," the actor/producer and Dartmouth alumna said when her gift was announced. "You can try things out, fail, and then revamp and rework things… A thing can be bad on its journey to becoming good." Share a story of failure, trial runs, revamping, reworking, or journeying from bad to good.
This prompt is a personal invitation to rethink the failures in your life. Instead of sweeping them under the rug, consider how they made you stronger, what you learned from them, and how they became moments to reinvent yourself or break radically from your past. Think about how they revealed ways in which you were not being true or authentic to yourself.
With that said, I would only choose this prompt if you experienced an unusual or significant struggle. Failing a test or being rejected by a prospective partner are experiences admissions officers have heard countless times, and they will assume you’ve been through them without needing an essay about it. Choose this prompt only if the failure involved substantial stakes, such as a robot you built that cost significant money or a situation that carried serious social consequences atypical for a high school student.
You can begin this essay with a vivid depiction of how you failed. Alternatively, you can start by describing how you envisioned success, and then show how everything unraveled. Describe the sting of realizing what you lost. If you begin with the failure itself, explain how you ended up in that situation.
The most important part of this essay will be how you turned things around. Be vivid and detailed as you describe the steps you took to recover, grow, or reinvent yourself. Make sure you take responsibility for your shortcomings and avoid blaming others.
To conclude, show how that failure, and its consequences became indispensable to your growth, and how you are genuinely better because of it. If the failure was so extreme that you are still suffering significant negative consequences and it remains a major burden in your life, it may not be the best choice for an admissions essay.
This is likely the most difficult prompt Dartmouth gives you the option to respond to, so approach it thoughtfully.
If you want your college admissions essays to be the decisive factor that gets you into your dream school, schedule a free consultation with an admissions expert today to have all of your questions answered.
