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Develop your leadership style in Dartmouth’s signature two-week academy for high school students, combining classroom discovery with outdoor challenges in the White Mountains.
Rated 4.7 out of 5 for classroom experience by students who took this course in 2026.
Course Description
Help a team find its way, make a difficult decision, or bring people together when plans change. Discover the kind of leader you can become through Dartmouth’s signature precollege leadership experience.
In this course you will explore leadership on Dartmouth’s campus, then put your ideas into practice beyond the classroom. Examine how leaders make decisions, how the brain influences behavior, and how your values shape your response. Self-assessments and collaborative challenges help you recognize your strengths and where you want to grow.
In the second week, learning moves to Dartmouth’s Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. Hiking, navigation, trail work, and team challenges make leadership personal. You’ll practice speaking up, listening closely, adapting, and helping a group move forward. Feedback and reflection help you understand the difference your choices make.
Bring those discoveries into a personal essay about what you believe and a leadership development framework with goals and next steps. Together, they give you tools to keep growing and specific experiences to draw on when explaining your contributions and ambitions in college applications.
This two-week full-day residential academy takes place on Dartmouth’s campus in Hanover, New Hampshire, and at Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. Fully developed and run by Dartmouth, it is taught by Dartmouth faculty and expert instructors.
What You Will Do
• Debate real-world leadership decisions
• Discover your strengths through self-assessment
• Solve team challenges and make decisions together
• Write a personal essay about your values
• Tackle hiking, navigation, and outdoor team challenges
• Build your personal leadership development plan
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
• Explain how values shape leadership choices
• Adapt their leadership to different people and challenges
• Use feedback to identify strengths and set growth goals
You’ll leave with a personal leadership framework, a “This I Believe” essay, and a certificate of completion. These provide tools for continued growth and concrete material for college application essays and interviews.
Why Leadership Skills Matter
A team can have plenty of ideas and still struggle to move forward. Listening, building trust, and making a decision when the answer is uncertain take practice. Classroom and outdoor challenges give those choices real consequences within the group.
Reflecting on what changed helps you describe how you contributed, adapted, or supported someone else. Those specific examples can be useful in college, internship, and early job applications or interviews, and in the next team you join.
Who Should Attend?
For students who have completed 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade.
Whether you bring a team together, notice unheard ideas, or want to make a difference, there’s room to discover your leadership style here. No formal leadership experience is required.
Come ready for hiking, navigation, trail work, personal writing, and feedback. The application includes a school transcript and short-answer questions.
93% Would Recommend The Dartmouth Leadership Institute
Based on students surveyed after attending the 2025 Dartmouth Leadership Institute.
Your Summer at Dartmouth
The Leadership Institute brings together three things that are difficult to find in one precollege program: Dartmouth-designed academic study, leadership practice with faculty and expert instructors, and place-based learning at Dartmouth’s Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. The lodge and White Mountains are not a field trip added to the academy; they are where students test what they have learned about judgment, service, resilience, and responsibility.
That movement from classroom to mountain challenge makes the Institute the signature experience in the Dartmouth Precollege Summer Scholars portfolio. Fully developed and run by Dartmouth, it offers students an intensive encounter with both Dartmouth’s intellectual culture and its longstanding connection to the outdoors.
After successfully finishing this course, you will be awarded a certification completion for your accomplishment.
*This is a preview, not what you will receive