AlexH12

I actually attended The Dartmouth Institute, so I can tell you a little bit about the location. It's definitely more rural, compared to a Hopkins or Columbia, but a lot of the students end up living either together or near one another in graduate (or just local) housing in Hanover, so there is a lot of carpooling to the TDI campus. Living in Hanover makes the non-academic part of life easier- you can pretty much walk to anything you need (local grocery, library, bars, restaurants, CVS, gym, etc.), even when it is winter. I'd definitely recommend living there- everything is right at your doorstep. The only commute is to class, and the way the classes are set up, it's usually just one drive over there and back per day, and again, people usually carpool. There's also a zipcar service in Hanover, and I know there was a free shuttle service, but I never tried it out. Hanover itself is really beautiful, and very safe, and the campus facilities are great (you get free gym membership!) and Dartmouth has its own ski mountain, which is really fun in the winter. There's also a really nice bus that runs directly from the Dartmouth campus to Boston, and one to NYC as well. I moved to Hanover from a city, so I was really nervous about the location, but it turned out that I really liked it! Also, I actually work in healthcare consulting now, and I think TDI was a better way to get into that than JHSPH would have been (I chose TDI over JHSPH). There's a big focus on healthcare as a system at TDI, and critical thinking about that, in addition to the more traditional epi/biostats/global health perspective you'd get in another program. There's research as well, and you can tailor how much of that (and what kind) you want to experience. Also, TDI has really strong ties to Tuck (the Dartmouth business school), with some professors who teach in both schools, and some cross-listed classes, so if you want to go into that side of healthcare, there is plenty of opportunity.