Our Wellesley visit, and some questions...

Colleges and Universities A-Z Wellesley College
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<p>Wellesley remains high on D's list after our visit this past week. She so wanted to buy one of the class 'beanies', but said she doesn't have a class color 'yet'. lol So, she bought herself a sweatshirt. :-) She sat in on a class and found it, and the students to be engaged and interesting. She saw some students doing presentations and was reassured that she felt capable of the same level of work that she saw. :-)</p>

<p>My feelings are a bit more mixed after visiting. She wasn't able to get an overnight or an official lunch with a student, as they were all booked up by the time she called to try to arrange it, and oddly, Wellesley doesn't do info sessions in November. She did have an interview, but it was with a student, so even though we spent a couple days there, our access was limited. :-( I didn't realize how limiting it would be, but because Wellesley's dining halls (except for one) are in the dorms, and only students have access to them, we could not visit those dining halls (We asked a few times) or see what life might be like in the dorms. I suspect that is a particularly big part of campus life at Wellesley. We saw one dorm room on the tour, but did not get to tour the dorm building, or see the dining hall there.
While we were there, the weather was nice. It was pretty cold Sunday, but beautiful...sweatshirt sort of weather on Monday.</p>

<p>The Wellesley campus is beautiful, but it is spread out, with no central quad type area where students seem to gather. We walked around on campus quite a bit, and running into other students out and about was fairly infrequent, except when classes were scheduled (Wellesley schedules classes at 4 specific times during the day.) In the evenings, which start as it gets dark around 4:00) made for dark and lonely walks around campus. The Lulu (the one dining hall that is outside of the dorms) was open until 8:30 and did draw a good number of people, but we came to suspect that students tend to just stay in the dorms in the evenings...because of the dark and the cold. That dining hall itself was pretty lively, but the gathering places, in the same building as that dining hall, felt more like a library, with students quietly studying, not socializing.</p>

<p>The big question we were left with, is... are there really frequent interesting events and activities that students truly participate in?</p>

<p>D had studied the activities calendar and found many things she thought sounded wonderful, and saw some things posted on bulletin boards that interested her. Those things made it seem that Wellesley would be an dynamic place with much (organized events) going on, but being there, it felt much more quiet. Students we spoke to talked of going to Boston on the weekend, and of watching TV. D says she spoke to others who talked more about events they'd gone to on campus, but the visit left us wondering if those are as frequent and/or as well attended as we'd imagined.</p>

<p>D is fine with quiet evenings studying in the dorm, but wants that to be mixed with a couple of events or activities each week. We wondered, with the fairly long, dark, cold, walks across campus, if that would tend to reduce the number of students who would participate when an event was offered on campus, if a student might head over to an event or meeting, only to find that not many others showed up. </p>

<p>Input on student life at Wellesley very much appreciated!</p>

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<p>Thank you for giving a “trip report”. My D is also interested and she did a quick visit with her Dad this summer. I’d also like to hear more about the weeknight activities from students there. I also didn’t know about the dining halls being in the dorms, that is interesting. I told D the one thing I absolutely hated about my college experience in Boston was that our dining hall was four blocks away, it was a scattered urban campus at a small secretarial school. Most everyone didn’t bother walking in the cold, dark nights to eat. We grabbed something after last class and then made do with whatever we could manage in the dorms or we did delivery.</p>

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<p>Hi! To answer some of your questions and to confirm some of your impressions:</p>

<p>There are a TON of activities on campus (around 10,500 a year). There’s actually a push from one of the student government committees right now to decrease programming so orgs can concentrate their resources into more condensed, less frequent events. The weather has definitely driven a lot of people indoors in the past couple of weeks, so I can see how campus would have seemed very empty at times. The Lulu is a very versatile space, and some part of it are much more social or studious depending on when you’re there and what part you’re in. I’d say that most spaces on campus are like that. Dining halls are pretty accessible, I would say, with a couple of exceptions (Dower, namely). It would certainly never be the case of having to walk four blocks to get to a dining hall. Dorm life is very much what you make of it. I’ve heard that stereotypically, Tower Complex is much more social than East Side, but honestly, I haven’t noticed much of a difference. My triple is pretty large, and we usually leave our door unlocked or open, so oddly I do a lot of my socializing in my room. Boston is definitely a good place to go in groups or even on your own if you just enjoy walking around the city (which I do frequently). As a rule of thumb I try to go off campus at least weekly, but it honestly just depends on your habits and needs as a person. Some people go several times a week, and some people almost never go.</p>

<p>Honestly, social life on campus is what you make of it, more so than on other campuses, I would say. There a ton of activities, though there’s typically a lot of flux in attendance, and almost any space on campus can be either a social space or a study space. It all depends on how she decides to spend her time. </p>

<p>(And just so you know, if your daughter is Class of 2019, her class color will be yellow :smile:)</p>

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<p>@EmmaEB, Thank you so much for your reply! Are you a freshman there this year? I’m wondering about how winter weather will affect activities…and if you’ve experienced that yet. We saw that the fire hydrants have poles on them, indicating that the town plans for deep snow! Are most of the events you mention in the evening or earlier in the day? </p>

<p>Have you found it relatively easy to form a group of friends to hang out with? I can see big benefits to having the dining hall in the dorms, especially in the winter! But, does that tend to mean you only hang out with others from your own dorm, since you can’t go to the other dining halls?</p>

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<p>shoboemom, Your description sounds like life at most academically rigorous LACs in New England.<br>
Dining in dorms is a plus, IMO. </p>

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<p>Wellesley is NOT for everyone. </p>

<p>If one is looking for a “normal” college life as in seeing boys, parties, a traditional Quad to hang out, the hustle and bustle of seeing a lot [boys and girls or lets us say even a bunch of girls] of students hanging out in a quad etc, they will be disappointed with W. </p>

<p>Wellesley is a women’s college. It is in a rich suburb. It will be quiet. It will feel as though you are in a park, rather than in a college. For the size of the school it has a rather “larrrrrge” campus [Total college student population is 2474, in a 500 acre, treed setting] with lots of mature and majestic trees in close proximity in the setting of manicured landscape, so everything blends and feels natural and not artificial. So you do feel lost in the campus. It has an amazing campus and is blessed with a serene lake. </p>

<p>Even during the day time when the students are not scurrying from one building to another, it does feel like you are in a park with a few beautiful old buildings scattered around, which you must search to find. It is QUIET. On a walk from one end of the campus to another end if you run in to more than 25 people [count, may the next time you are there] on a busy day, I will be surprised. Be prepared for this during your college visits and once you are on campus as a student. It feels more like a place for meditation, pondering and perhaps painting than partying.</p>

<p>Re: Safety: My D, who is a first year walks from the library to her dorm at or after 12 mid night [I think this is correct, may be a just before mid night] with no fear [and she is the kind of girl, we have to rush to her room on hearing her loud screams to transport ants, spiders etc out of her room in our house]. Surprisingly, Wellesley is a SAFE campus. I heard a faculty member recently comment on Parents Weekend that the scariest thing she came across walking across campus once at night was a badger [of sorts] several feet away. As far as I know there have been no recent campus robberies, assaults [sexual or physical], I can not quote statistics here, sorry.</p>

<p>In my humble opinion, if you are not a student who is serious about your studies; a strong, intellectual but quiet person who enjoys their alone time as much as being with a few people; some one who feels at home spending hours together with books alone in a library or in their room, then you may not enjoy Wellesley and will feel you are missing the “traditional college” life.</p>

<p>Do not get fooled by the multiple but EXCELLENT activities listed on their web site, it may be attended by only few 10’s of people at the most at a time, it is going to be quiet. If you are not the type of person who enjoys solitude then you will be bored. </p>

<p>Wellesley is not for every one. </p>

<p>But Wellesley will bring the best in you, if you are willing to accept her weakness [Woman’s college - okay it is not it’s weakness -, quiet, not in a city, older dorms with some but not all rooms which are very small, expensive - lets not forget that] and engage/enjoy her strengths [Woman’s college which wants to empower women and to make them leaders in anything they want to do in their future, a fantastic and challenging academic institution, well connected, fanatical alumnae, peaceful serene campus, not in a city but with access to a bigger city], then and ONLY then Wellesley should be your college of choice.</p>

<p>Just my opinion.</p>

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<p>

This seems to describe my D, and what we saw at Wellesley.</p>

<p>Thank you @tamtiger, This is something she will have to consider carefully.
She is definitely not interested in the ‘traditional’ college experience, with parties and football games.
I know she wants the option to be social, and very much wants to be a part of groups who are actively engaged in projects and events, perhaps some activism…and then be able to retreat to the calm of her dorm.
In some colleges the possibility of this type of engagement is more obvious, but as long as it is there to be found, that can work for her, as long as she knows how to find it.</p>

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<p>@shoboemom‌ </p>

<p>I guess then your D will like Wellesley. </p>

<p>Regarding activism, it is up to your D to take up a cause that she feels strongly about. I heard that there is a group of students who are trying to have an organization called - “college students for the rights of Palestinian people” or something to that effect. But Wellesley is not encouraging this organization [I guess Jewish lobby] and has only now given a some resources such as a place to meet etc. </p>

<p>There was a recent lecture at Wellesley by a “Jewish” professor from MIT who is a vocal critic of current Israeli governmental policies towards the suppression of human rights in Palestine.</p>

<p>So if you want to be an activist, there is an example of going against the crowd. It is up to the student to take up a cause. I think that Wellesley just like MIT, Harvard and other mature academic institutions encourages debate and dissent in such things. </p>

<p>Your D will find like minded students in what ever she chooses to do.</p>

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<p>@shoboemom‌, my daughter is a sophomore who lives on the east side of campus. She loves Wellesley because it is full of introverted intellectual types. The students who like to party every weekend tend not to be happy there. But for everyone else, there is plenty to do. </p>

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<p>@‌shoeboemom </p>

<p>I’m a first year Southerner, so I’m not really sure how cold it will get and how it will effect activities. Today I had to get a lesson from my more cold-blooded roomies on how the radiator works. From what I’ve heard from upperclassmen, people just bundle up and get used to it. know that classes are VERY rarely cancelled. I’ve also heard that many students here struggle with Season Affective Disorder, but those are really the only concerns I’ve heard voiced widely regarding the winter. </p>

<p>Most of the events are in the late afternoon/evening, though some are during community time (a block of an hour and forty five minutes every Wednesday where no one has classes). </p>

<p>I would say that where you live on campus doesn’t have a huge effect on where your friends will be. The student cards give us access to all of the residence halls and dining halls no matter where you live, so as long as you’re willing to make the walk (which, at the very worst, will be about fifteen minutes), everywhere is accessible. </p>

<p>As for making friends, I did not find it very easy, even though it happened more quickly for me than it did for others, but it was something I knew I was going to have to work through no matter where I went for college. Though I personally know a lot of extroverts, I am very introverted, and campus as a whole seems to trend that way. Honestly, the way I made friends was just working against the grain and trying to force myself into stuff. I helped make food for some of the girls on my floor during orientation week, I got a group of people to roll down Sev Green with me our second night, and I went to a lot of org interest meetings, even though I joined relatively few of them. Some of those attempts were successful, some weren’t, and I’m still very much trying to form connections as genuine as I had in high school, but a lot of that is just a matter of time. There’s a wide array of experiences here, as there are at every college, but I find most of the people here to be very friendly. </p>

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<p>@Tamtiger has done a very good job describing the atmosphere on the Wellesley campus. I had to laugh at myself last semester when I got annoyed at a girl who was loudly Skyping in a foreign language when I was trying to study. I saw that others around me were getting annoyed too. Then I remembered that I had actually left the library an hour ago to get lunch and was now studying in the Lulu, surrounded by other students sitting silently at our own tables with our noses in books. You get so used to the quiet here that a lively conversation can sometimes seem almost disruptive.</p>

<p>I agree with the comments that you need to work harder here to socialize. However, I disagree with the thought that those of us who are unhappy with the social life here are merely looking for drunken frat parties and football games. I just find the overall lack of joie de vivre here depressing. I wish there was more levity and camaraderie among students. And I am not alone. The good news is that last spring, a group of students organized Wellesley S.M.I.L.E.S. (Spontaneous Moments in the Lives of Everyday Students). Their goals are “spreading positivity and strengthening the Wellesley community.” Take a look at their Facebook page for more info.</p>

<p>Yes, the campus will look like a ghost town here when the temperature drops as we all retreat to our rooms unless heading to class or to eat (not every dorm has its own dining hall.) Ugh, it is 25 degrees here today! </p>