Hello! It has been a while!
@ostara There are so many people in MAS. I have many friends / people I know that are doing MAS, that love MAS, that have dedicated their academic lives to MAS. From what I’ve heard the profs are lovely!
@memelover
— On the academic environment, something a prof said to me a few days ago that I really loved was that Wellesley is one of the few schools where everyone really loves learning, wants to work hard, and is really eager to push themselves. There are no easy classes at Wellesley and not going to lie, that’s not always a stress-free situation. But, I think recently students have become much MUCH more aware of the importance of self care and the college has so many resources to help students find a balance between work and play. After going onto other college campuses I’ve become so much more aware of how highly Wellesley prioritizes self care (although perhaps not as high as is optimal!). So yes there are hard classes, but I’ve found everything very doable so far, and there are resources for you even if you consider yourself a “chill” person.
On a side note if you meant competition between peers, there is no academic competition between people here. Everyone has something to offer and we don’t need to compare grades or anything to do that. Academic competition mostly comes from competition with yourself.
— So I’m at a “new dorm” and have been told our bathrooms are better than other bathrooms. So far I’ve found bathroom situations to be perfectly adequate. I’m not sure what you mean specifically - elaborate and maybe I’d be able to help you better?
— I’m an international student and so my financial aid situation would not be accurately reflected on the aid calendar. That being said, from what I’ve heard from other students financial aid packages tend to be pretty generous at Wellesley, which is the deciding factor why some people are here. Wellesley has a lot of money and when it comes to financial aid I’ve heard they tend to do better than some. People have successfully negotiated their aid packages before, but again I wouldn’t know the details of this. In interests of full disclosure I did not apply for financial aid.
— So before coming here I had very mixed feelings about the whole womans college thing. I alternatively thought it wouldn’t bother me or that maybe it would be one of those tolerable but undesirable things. After being here for a while I’ve begun to really love the WC aspect of Wells. I was stereotypically one of those people who never had a shitton of female friends in high school and I’ve started to appreciate how much I like having very strong female friendships here. I’m not sure if the same will be for you - although alternatively, I know some people from W who practically live at MIT / Harvard / etc. and have very strong friends from other colleges. It’s very possible to have many different configurations of friend groups.
Another thing was, I didn’t realize how AWESOME the profs would be here. Granted I tend to get excited about professors easily but holy crap our professors care so much about their students and really want us to do well. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a space where I can be simultaneously challenged and respected so much. Wellesley profs tend to really love their jobs and there IS a difference being in a small classroom with an insanely clever person telling you things about the world. There are some bad profs here but not many, and I think it makes a world of difference to not have profs who are here simply for the research opportunities.
On things I dislike… I think it took me longer to make tight friends here than I thought it would. I know some people find it a problem to make friends their first few years, although this might be a uni thing in general instead of a specifically Wellesley thing. Stress and mental health issues are a real legitimate problem and I don’t want to undermine that. I think this is true for a lot of high ranking elite schools in general, but I definitely see how the less “chill” atmosphere at W could be contributing to that disproportionately.
@misschoding I came from a schooling system that forces me to take a lot of different types of classes and I really enjoyed that system. So far no one I’ve talked to has found it incredibly hard to do distributions, but again, no easy classes at Wellesley and you WILL have to take a challenging arts class, or maths class, or science class even if you aren’t one of “those people”. I would say that is one of the beauties of being at a liberal arts school, that even though I havent touched physics for a solid 3 years someone excellent will still be offering an intro to physics class that I can take here. The possibilities are endless!
This was pretty long, sorry. Also apologies for the long delay! Keep the questions coming if there are any more.
