Dartmouth Supplemental Essay Prompts for 2025-2026

You’ve probably pictured it already: the Green in autumn, a hike through the White Mountains, professors who know your name. But now senior year is here, and the application isn’t about imagining Dartmouth — it’s about showing why you belong there.

The supplement has three parts: one short “Why Dartmouth” response, and two longer essays where you’ll choose from a range of prompts. Each is designed to show how you think, what matters to you, and what you’ll bring into a close-knit community.

Here’s how you can approach this year’s prompts:

1) Why Dartmouth? (100 words)

With so little space, you need to be sharp. Instead of broad claims like “I value community,” point to one or two academic or cultural aspects that genuinely match your values.

For example, maybe the flexibility of the D-Plan excites you because it lets you spend a fall term working on sustainable farming policy in New England while still graduating on time. Or maybe you’re drawn to the Neukom Institute, where you’d test an algorithm you started building in high school for analyzing social networks. A tradition like the Dartmouth Outing Club might connect to your love of leading groups outdoors.

What matters is showing how one value you hold finds its match at Dartmouth — and how you’ll carry it forward once you’re there.

2) Identity and Voice (250 words)

Prompts like “Let your life speak” or “Be yourself” really ask: what has shaped you, and how does that influence the way you show up in a community?

Anchor your answer in one vivid environment or role. Maybe you grew up in a family-owned restaurant, where translating between customers and relatives taught you to navigate cultural nuances with precision. Maybe you commute an hour each way to school, which gave you a rhythm of persistence and reflection that seeps into how you prepare for debate tournaments.

The point is not just describing background but naming the pattern it created: perhaps you became the person who spots small cracks in group projects before they spread, or the one who keeps morale steady when others burn out.

Then carry it forward to Dartmouth. How will that behavior serve peers in small seminars, in research teams where iteration matters, or in clubs where different voices have to pull together? The best essays don’t read like résumés. They read like lived experience turned into a strength classmates can count on.

3) Curiosity, Purpose, or Perspective (250 words)

This final essay gives you choice — but every option is really about how you think.

If you choose “What excites you”: don’t catalogue interests; zoom in on the one you can’t stop chasing. Maybe it’s the math behind how trees branch, which you modeled in Python and want to test in Dartmouth’s ecology labs. Or the ethics of AI, which you explored through late-night philosophy podcasts and a high school project on bias in facial recognition. Proof matters more than adjectives.

If you write about “a life of purpose”: ground it in one concrete decision, not a mission statement. Did you design a tutoring exchange in your neighborhood because younger students were falling behind? Walk us through the tradeoffs you made and the persistence it required. Show purpose as a practice, not a slogan.

If you pick the “book that changed you” prompt: name one text and the before/after. Maybe Between the World and Me made you reconsider the way history is told in classrooms, and you used that lens to create a podcast with classmates. Don’t retell the plot; show consequence.

Other prompts — disagreement, “nerdy side,” failure, being green — all share the same DNA: specificity, humility, and growth. The strongest essays show unfinished edges: curiosity that still has room to stretch in Hanover’s close-knit setting.

Dartmouth’s prompts may look short, but they’re designed to reveal how you think, what energizes you, and how you’ll add value to a small, collaborative campus.

At Ivy Link, we work with students to strike that balance: shaping broad prompts into essays that sound like you while meeting the expectations of selective admissions. From brainstorming ideas to final polish, we guide every step so your responses are sharp, credible, and unmistakably yours.

If Dartmouth is your dream — or if you’re applying across multiple Ivies — we’re here to help you approach the process with confidence and clarity.