At a time of rapid economic and social change, more Americans are disillusioned with higher education than ever, according to a poll from the Pew Research Center. In an opinion piece earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal, President Sian Leah Beilock argued that this trust problem comes from a disconnect between what colleges and universities offer and what students and their families need.
“Assuming that most Americans value our mission is a recipe for irrelevance and decline. We must demonstrate to students and families—and to the broader public—that we’ve heard their criticisms and will address them,” President Beilock wrote. “We own the return on investment, not only the tuition bill.”
To that end, Dartmouth is committed to making an undergraduate education affordable—and to ensuring that all students can access experiences that will benefit them, and society, throughout their lives.
“We want Dartmouth to be a big tent that brings together the brightest students—students who are excelling in their environment and are ready for new challenges,” Beilock says. “We know that the best educational outcomes happen when we create space for students with different backgrounds and life experiences to come together, get to know each other, and share different points of view.”
Dartmouth tuition is free for students from families making $175,000 or less, and for families making $125,000 room and board is also free. Dartmouth admits students need-blind—without regard to their ability to pay—and is committed to meeting 100% of students’ demonstrated financial need, loan-free, for all four years of their undergraduate experience. (A campaign to extend loan-free financial aid to fifth-year engineering students is currently underway.) The goal is to make sure students are not graduating with significant debt.
In addition to these and other programs supporting access and affordability on campus, three recent programs—partnerships with the National Education Opportunity Network, or NEON, and the Small Town and Rural Students College Network, or STARS; and Dartmouth NEXT, a university-wide science, technology, engineering, and math initiative—are helping Dartmouth reach more students where they are.
Bringing Dartmouth rigor to under-resourced high schools
“This course helped me understand what college-level work actually feels like, so now I’m looking at schools that match that level of rigor.”
That’s a survey response from one of 90 high school students from nine low-income schools in Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., who completed a Dartmouth course last fall through Dartmouth’s new partnership with NEON.
The schools are located in high-poverty areas and eligible for federal funding through Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
NEON, a national nonprofit previously known as the National Education Equity Lab, brings together top universities and schools in high-poverty areas. The idea is to help prepare students for college by offering rigorous academic experiences.
The students enrolled in Psychology 6: Introduction to Neuroscience—one of Dartmouth’s most popular courses and a prerequisite for the neuroscience major—attended in-person sessions with a facilitating classroom teacher at their school; watched videos pre-recorded by course leader Shawn Winter, a senior lecturer in psychological and brain sciences; participated in Zoom discussions led by Dartmouth undergraduate teaching fellows; and completed writing assignments, weekly quizzes, and other activities.
“The lessons that we’ve learned about how to meet students where they are while still offering the Dartmouth quality and Dartmouth rigor have been really deep,” says Erin DeSilva, senior associate provost for learning innovation and interim director of the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning.
“It is more important than ever that we understand what high school students know and are able to do before they come to Dartmouth,” DeSilva says. “NEON is giving us insight into the variety of experiences that high school students are having in their own learning, and that’s worth investing in.”
Providing high school students with an intensive—and free—college-level academic experience is a win-win for the students and for Dartmouth, says Kathryn Bezella, assistant vice president and dean of undergraduate admissions. The program is helping Dartmouth identify an otherwise hard-to-find pool of prospective students in regions where the college-age population is growing fastest.
“With NEON, we have an amazing opportunity to go into Title I schools where there are students who are already motivated learners,” Bezella says. “These students spend a whole term experiencing the special nature of Dartmouth’s learning directly, and so the amount of information that we can convey about a Dartmouth education and about the culture here is immediately vivid.”
Though it’s early to judge results, there’s evidence that this model works. Five students who took other NEON-sponsored courses during high school recently matriculated at Dartmouth. And from Dartmouth’s own program, Bezella says Admissions has already seen a 29% increase in student requests for information about Dartmouth from those schools.
“That’s a far bigger increase than what the average would be from year to year, certainly from Title I schools randomly around the country,” Bezella says, suggesting that exposure to the NEON program is helping students in participating schools better understand the process for applying to selective colleges and universities such as Dartmouth.
Fostering rural connections
The STARS network, which Dartmouth joined in 2024, is a consortium of colleges and universities that helps connect admissions officers with high schools in small communities where it can be especially challenging for students to find crucial information about educational opportunities and resources, such as financial aid.
“These are students who are coming from places where going to highly selective colleges in a different part of the country is not common,” Bezella says. “They’re often high-achieving students who feel a lot of ambivalence around leaving their community. They’re big fish in little ponds, representing a lot of intellectual capital and potential. It’s important for us to share stories with them about students like them who left their regions to go to college.”
STARS funds a variety of initiatives to help member institutions create programming for rural students and schools. For instance, Dartmouth’s admissions office has recruited undergraduates from rural communities to text with prospective rural and small-town students directly.
The partnership is a natural fit for Dartmouth, Bezella says. “Dartmouth is uniquely great for rural students. Some students, we really have to pitch living in small-town New Hampshire. Rural students are already more attuned to it.”
In part through funding from STARS, Dartmouth has doubled the capacity of Dartmouth Bound, a summer program that gives high school students an experience of daily college life, and this year STARS funds will help Dartmouth host an on-campus session of College Horizons, a program that brings Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian students—many from very rural places—to learn about college opportunities.
Dartmouth recently used STARS funding to host more than a dozen college counselors from rural communities around the country on campus, part of a tour of member institutions. The counselors “got the kind of college tour that many independent schools automatically give their college guidance team,” but that is typically out of reach for low-income rural public schools, Bezella says.
And Dartmouth also travels with admissions officers from STARS member institutions to visit and build relationships with schools and other organizations in rural communities.
“If we look at where the population of high school graduates is growing, it’s places like Tennessee, Texas, Florida, California—regions where a small liberal arts college is not as common as it is in this part of the country,” says Bezella. “So that mandates a huge reexamination of what we do and how we do it. The tools that we’ve historically used to attract students become far less effective and far less meaningful. Programs like STARS and NEON give us more ability to create meaningful engagement.”
Dartmouth NEXT: Building a diverse STEM pipeline
Once students arrive on campus, Dartmouth is working to ensure that they have access to the opportunities that will shape their futures. One program that is doing this is Dartmouth NEXT—a $100 million, university-wide initiative encouraging students to pursue degrees in STEM fields, spurred by the national labor shortage in these areas critical to innovation and economic growth.
Launched in 2022, Dartmouth NEXT is a nexus for students at all levels—including those who are first-generation or from underrepresented groups—to access opportunities in STEM, supporting academic enrichment, scholars programs, research, and mentoring.
“I see Dartmouth NEXT as a beacon of hope and a conduit of opportunity. We’re building the next generation of scientists, technologists, engineers, artists, mathematicians, health care professionals,” says Ansley Booker, the inaugural Penny and Jim Coulter 1982 Executive Director of Dartmouth NEXT, who joined the Dartmouth community in 2024.
Dartmouth NEXT partners with new and existing programs on campus—including Dartmouth Early Research Access in the Sciences, Women in Computer Science, the E.E. Just Program, Dartmouth Emerging Engineers, the house communities, the First-Generation Office, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, the Center for Career Design, the Institute for Black Intellectual and Cultural Life, and others—to create opportunities for students to conduct research, network with peers, and access mentorship opportunities in the sciences.
Cultivating mentorship is crucial, Booker says, especially relationships with more experienced students who newer students can see as near-peers.
“Students are able to ask a person they view as a peer about their academic experience, about their social experience, what courses to take, what scholarships or internships or fellowships should they seek,” she says. Dartmouth NEXT looks for creative ways to foster these connections, which don’t have to be formal, Booker says. One example: with Coulter Scholar Victoria Ruiz ’26, Booker hopes to co-launch a “chat and chew” mentoring and networking opportunity for undergraduates to take a graduate student to lunch program, an idea that came from student feedback.
In June 2025, Dartmouth announced a $12.5 million grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation to support near-peer mentoring through Dartmouth Emerging Engineers; the Learning Fellows Program, which trains undergraduates to assist in Dartmouth classrooms; and the Teaching Science Fellows, recent graduates who act as teaching assistants in biology and chemistry courses.
One flagship program connected with Dartmouth NEXT is the Coulter Scholars, a scholarship supporting 16 undergraduates from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM, administered by Undergraduate Research. The Coulter Scholars were created thanks to the $25 million gift from Penny and James Coulter ’82 that seeded Dartmouth NEXT. Throughout their Dartmouth experience, scholars receive grants for research and experiential learning opportunities and participate in a variety of activities as a cohort.
Some students who have already benefited from Dartmouth NEXT programs include:
