About

The Dartmouth Leadership Institute is a pre-college program offered within Dartmouth's broader Summer Scholars platform, focused on leadership theory, policy, and social change. It runs in two distinct formats. The standard on-campus track is a roughly two-week course examining leadership through academic case studies — exploring how identity, institutional context, and competing theories of leadership shape real-world outcomes in government, policy, and social movements. The second format, Leadership Institute D, combines approximately one week of on-campus coursework with a four-day immersive outdoor leadership experience at Dartmouth's private Moosilauke Ravine Lodge in New Hampshire's White Mountains. Both tracks are taught by Dartmouth-affiliated instructors and culminate in a certificate of completion; no academic credit is awarded and courses are explicitly ungraded.

The program is run in partnership with Summer Discovery, a third-party enrichment operator. Admission is rolling and not meaningfully selective — the application requires a transcript and short responses to interest questions, with decisions issued on a rolling basis. Both the January 28 regular deadline and the March 25 extended deadline reflect a capacity-driven rather than merit-screening model. The program is open to U.S. and international students ages 15–18.

Dartmouth Pre-College itself launched as a pilot only in summer 2024, making this among the newest institutional pre-college programs at any Ivy League school. Instructors are primarily Dartmouth faculty, staff, lecturers, and alumni, with courses designed to reflect current scholarly thinking in their fields. Leadership Institute D's distinctive feature is the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge component — Dartmouth's historic mountain facility used for undergraduate programming — which gives the outdoor leadership track access to an environment not available to most pre-college programs at peer institutions.

For students specifically drawn to Dartmouth or to outdoor leadership development in an academic context, Dartmouth Leadership Institute presents an ideal summer experience.