Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Dartmouth College received an all-time high of more than 28,000 undergraduate applications this year, according to the provost.
Undergraduate applications to Dartmouth are up 32% over the prior year, while applications for graduate programs also were up about 16%, Dartmouth Provost Joseph Helble said in a virtual community conversation on Feb. 3.
The college attributed the jump in applications to its digital recruitment initiatives, as well as the pandemic-related decision to pause the college’s standardized testing requirement for one year and Dartmouth’s promise to meet the financial need of accepted applicants. Admissions decisions are set to be released on April 6.
On Wednesday, Helble announced that the college will not relax its travel policies this summer, so study abroad programs will not take place. During another virtual community conversation, Helble attributed this decision to the slowness of the vac cine rollout nationwide, as well as emerging more-infectious variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. He said he was “hopeful” that travel programs might resume in the fall should the vaccine rollout accelerate over the summer.
He also announced that the college has delayed course selection for the fall, which usually takes place in the spring, until the summer to allow the college to plan for a return to more normal operations.
As of Tuesday, the college was down to just four active cases of COVID-19, including one student case and three employees, according to the school’s virus dashboard. Seven members of the Dartmouth community were in quarantine and 15 in isolation.
