<p>For a while my two top choices have been Wesleyan and Middlebury. What attracted me particularly to Midd was the great language programs (and the location). I was accepted at Wesleyan and waitlisted at Middlebury. I'm wondering if I should spend the time trying to get off Middlebury's waitlist, or just stick with Wes. I know that Wes has comparable (if not better) sciences, which is my other main academic interest. Does anyone know how languages are at Wesleyan (Spanish, French, Arabic... in general)?</p>
<p>You could try looking through courses offered by going to Wesmaps (google it), which is the online coursebook. Also, look up professors at ratemyprofessors.com (with a grain of salt)(and be sure that the professor you’re looking at still teaches at Wes, because many of the negative ratings are for professors that have since left).
Good luck!</p>
<p>Of course they have most of the major ones. As you can imagine, the Spanish dept is the biggest. German and Russian are quite small. One of Wesleyan’s points of pride is their emphasis on Eastern languages - you can study Japanese, Chinese, or Korean up to a fairly advanced level. (That’s actually the answer to a trivia question: what’s the one dept. at Wesleyan that doesn’t offer a major: Eastern languages. They offer the majors in other departments.) And they have a lot of additional strength in these areas – one of their philosophy professors is an expert on Eastern philosophy, which is a pretty rare speciality at a LAC. I do not know how they are handling Arabic. They didn’t offer it at all a few years ago. It’s my impression that most of the LACs are scrambling to develop programs. I would not attend Wesleyan if you wanted to study the classical languages at an advanced level. They are not strong enough. They do have some resources in Hebrew language - not enough for a major but something pretty substantial.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s relevant or not but at Wesleyan you find a very high percentage of students double-majoring. One reason is that it gives them access to classes with a limit. You’ll find many, many foreign language majors, many of whom have an additional major. As you can imagine, Wesleyan has excellent study abroad opportunities. It’s very rare that a language major does not spend a semester or year in the country of choice.</p>
<p>Last I heard, they were going to hire a post-doc to teach Arabic. Probably just enough to read, write and translate, but, then again I don’t know of ANY Arabic language department that specializes in conversational Arabic.</p>
<p>Also, if you want to study a language that isn’t offered at Wes, you can self-study it, and the university will help set you up with a tutor that knows the language (and i’m pretty sure you get credit for this…but i’m not positive)</p>