<p>i just got in off the waitlist at tufts! however, i sent my deposit into wesleyan. now i have a few days to make this decision. please help me out here, can people give me their experiences at tufts and perhaps compare it to wesleyan? i'm a prospective english major going premed. any help would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>tufts. im leaving here, but i'd still definitely pick here over wesleyan. larger, more diverse student body, closer to a big city, stronger pre-med, more to do.</p>
<p>Tufts is diverse only in the sense that you have more than just liberal arts majors on campus; it has a lot of pre-professional degrees and programs. You may luck out and meet someone outside your academic niche, but, for the most part, it's just a lot more folks waiting on line in front of you in the cafeteria.</p>
<p>My niece and two of my partner's children are recent Tufts graduates. They uniformly had an amazing, enriching, and enjoyable experience. They had no difficulties in gaining entry to the graduate/professional programs of their choice. The proximity of the school to Boston was an added attraction to an already positive campus life. Congratulations on your acceptance!!!</p>
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Tufts is diverse only in the sense that you have more than just liberal arts majors on campus
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<p>Though you skew it in a negative light, that's actually more significant than you give it credit for. You would know about Tufts diversity how? Personal anecdotes?</p>
<p>^ Yeah, and from a guy whose username reflects the name of the founder of the Methodist religion...I'm sure you've got a good head on your shoulders. I could only see Engineering kids + LAC kids = good diversity, and as Tufts has one of the highest percentages of Intl. students, I don't see how you could support your claim...</p>
<p>I would go with Wesleyan. I think overall it is more academically respected. I think it does a lot better on the WSJ feeder school rankings as well. The two aren't that much different though, so I would go with fit to a large extent.</p>
<p>^ It's really not more academically respected. In terms of the "feeder" rankings, that is quite skewed as it didn't take law or med school into account, nor did it factor in people going to programs such as Fletcher.</p>
<p>There are a number of things the WSJ feeder school rankings didn't factor in, including the number of students who simply choose to go right into the work force after graduation. But, it certainly did include law and medical school admissions:</p>
<p>I didn't like Wesleyan BECAUSE:
1. Too small for me.
2. Too isolated.
3. The dorms looked like dirty motels.
4. During the info session, the leader said "We're not just a bunch of hippie liberals dancing in the woods!" but then did nothing to dissuade me from this notion.
5. They don't serve breakfast! Seriously, I didn't eat breakfast all that much but when I needed to, at least I COULD!</p>
<p>The rankings are junk. Have you noticed that the ONLY factor in the rankings is the number of students who will attend a "top graudate school" divided by the total class size? Schools like Cornell, which has all of these wierd programs, Tufts, which sends many students into the "international" profession, and tech schools are all screwed in the rankings. It also only included several "top graduate schools", so naturally the undergrad institutions for those grad schools will have a huge boost in the rankings due to school loyalty. Why do you think Harvard and Yale are 3-4 times as high as UPenn?</p>
<p>Tufts' pre-med is probably one of the best academic areas in the university and graduate schools know about it. It lacks behind top programs such as Washington in St Louis or John Hopkins, or top overall schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford, but it certainly beats out Wesleyan.</p>
<p>There's an old New England expression: "The proof is in the pudding."</p>
<p>.. and I just disproved your "proof".</p>
<p>What's the overall acceptance rate to medical school for Wesleyan? Let's compare that to Tufts and other top premed programs.</p>
<p>For students with a combined gpa of 3.5 (approximately the same requirement for the Tufts BA/MD early admit applicants) the rate has been between 85 and 100%:
<a href="http://www.wesleyan.edu/sciences/%5B/url%5D">http://www.wesleyan.edu/sciences/</a></p>
<p>"between 85 and 100%"
You mean 83%? I wonder why they only listed the stats for students with over a 3.5... I mean an 83% acceptance rate, in one of the four years listed, for students with over a 3.5 means that almost 1 out of 5 students who did well at Wesleyan didn't get into any medical school.</p>
<p>Anyways, the OVERALL acceptance rate for Tufts to medical schools was "between 85 to 90%", and the acceptance rate for students with over a 3.5 "rises to over 90%". Tufts has over 100 applicants to medical school every year, so the "over 90%" is not just a fluke. <a href="http://admissions.tufts.edu/?pid=90%5B/url%5D">http://admissions.tufts.edu/?pid=90</a> I believe the acceptance rate for someone with 3.5 or higher in the Washu or John Hopkins pre-med programs were 97-98%, and the overall acceptance rate was rougly 90%. Do you need any more "proof"?</p>
<p>Keep trolling around with your obviously flawed "rankings".</p>
<p>Is this about the WSJ poll? As far as I'm concerned the Wall Street Journal "feeder school" poll only purports to show who's getting into fifteen or so top professional schools. It's not MY ranking, flawed or otherwise. It is what it is. </p>
<p>And, BTW, and FWIW, I would be the first to admit that the reason Tufts does not rank higher in that poll has probably something to do with the fact that the bulk of their pre-meds probably enroll in Tufts' own med school which ranks considerably below the top five.</p>
<p>That being said, I could have predicted when we began this colloquy that one or the other or the both of us would wind up by saying that our school boasts "a >90% admission rate." Every LAC I've ever heard of makes that claim at some time or other. And most do it without the benefit of having their own med school.</p>