Need help understanding chances for S23

[circuitrider]

@Bill_Marsh

@chardonMN

Thank you! Interesting point about the size of Wesleyan’s first year class vs. some others. How would Tufts fit into this consideration? Similar do you think? Or maybe it’s even more competitive to start with.

I have heard nothing but good things about Whitman. I hope to get him out there to see it, if he thinks it looks good.

I think that Tufts is more competitive to start with. They’re really not in the same category, Tufts being a research university and Wes being a small LAC. Tufts has long been known as the back up choice for Harvard aspirants, so it attracts applicants who want to be in Boston at a medium sized research university. That seems to be a bigger group than those who want to be in a small LAC in general and in suburban central Connecticut in particular.

Of course, Wesleyan and Tufts partisans are bound to butt heads on which school is poaching on whose niche market. First of all, it’s hard to argue they are in entirely different categories when they are two of the most visible members of the same athletic conference, NESCAC (the New England Small College Athletic Conference). And, it’s at least arguable that there are other more credible candidates for “back up choice for Harvard aspirants” within that same conference, sometimes referred to as “the little Ivy League”.

As my friend, @Bill_Marsh explained in another thread,

@Bill_Marsh

Tufts was a small liberal arts college until it began to transform into a major research university in the 1970s. By that time the campus footprint in Somerville was pretty well set. It should be noted that the Medical School and College of Pharmacy are not housed on the Somerville campus but at a separate complex in downtown Boston. Likewise the Art School is not in Somerville but also in Boston along the Fenway and near the Museum of Fine Arts. Student residence facilities are here as well.

So, in many ways, Tufts tries to present itself as a hybrid between two different brands, the little ivy and the “medium-size research university” and, without the reflected glory of colleges like Amherst, Williams, Middlebury and - yes, Wesleyan - it’s difficult to know where Tufts’ brand would begin and Boston University’s, Boston College’s, Northeastern’s or Holy Cross’s would end.