<p>Which is more prestigious and better for OCR/professional school placement?</p>
<p>Med school is a wash because so much of it depends on grades and MCAT results. I'm sure Pomona places more than its share of kids at Stanford, USC and UCLA. Wesleyan is closer to Wall Street, so it gets included on more recruitment tours. Counterintuitively, Wesleyan probably has the bigger foothold in Hollywood. Dollars to donuts, "the person in the street" wouldn't know either of them from bath soap.</p>
<p>johnwesley, it's really quite striking how you bring up Wall Street a lot, given my impression of Wes as a liberal hippie school.
But then I might very well be wrong.</p>
<p>Really? I wasn't aware I was doing that a lot. :p I only mention it here because it would be one clear difference between an East Coast and a West Coast LAC. And, while I don't see Wes alum as preponderantly concerned with Wall Street as some other NESCAC colleges are, Economics is one of its strongest departments and a fair number of them go into private industry after graduation, maybe even pursuing an MBA along the way.</p>
<p>i suppose you are right. i am visiting Wesleyan next week, and i think i will have to pose the hard, clear question to Career Services:</p>
<p>"If i want to become an investment banker at a prestigious boutique, how does the opportunities at Wesleyan compare with other schools, and what other schools are comparable in terms of such opportunities?"</p>
<p>dont worry, johnwesley, i have already asked your take on this.</p>
<p>i just need the official version to set my mind at ease. we live in a day and age where income disparity is growing, and it's increasingly important to be on the right side of the income abyss from the very get-go. very sad, but seemingly the reality.</p>
<p>haha.</p>
<p>i've attended both schools (transferred to wesleyan from pomona this past year) and i can definitely say that they're both fantastic institutions. as far as grad school placement goes, i think that pomona has a stronger background in sending people to prestigious places directly after graduation, whereas wesleyan students frequently take some time off between undergrad and grad work. </p>
<p>if you're currently deciding between the two, i would definitely recommend visiting both, if possible. they have pretty different vibes to them even though they're fairly similar schools.</p>
<p>sf606508: you're gross. go somewhere else.</p>
<p>bump, I'm making the same decision and am still really stuck.</p>
<p>Wes alums can be found doing quite well in investment banking and are also high level executives on Wall Street and in the corporate world- they are not all out to save the world (not that it is mutually exclusive with IB). It seems that students get a very strong education at Wesleyan, but what is important is that at an LAC like Wesleyan with the way students can choose to take courses, it also creates well-rounded thinkers - who in turn become more dynamic leaders in their chosen field (overstatement but mostly true). Also, I was tild that career services seems to be very helpful with its strong and very interested alumni network</p>
<p>Have you guys visited?</p>
<p>Pomona, perhaps affected by the weather, is a little more "perfect little college," whereas I feel like Wesleyan is a lot homeier, with all the grit/character a college should have. I don't know if that quite makes sense. I mean, I'm not saying Pomona doesn't have character - it does, and the advantages of the Claremont system are awesome. Still, I know a couple of people who went to Pomona and weren't actually thrilled with the atmosphere. Pomona is more-liberal-than-average, but I don't think so with the same depth that Wesleyan is.</p>
<p>"i just need the official version to set my mind at ease. we live in a day and age where income disparity is growing, and it's increasingly important to be on the right side of the income abyss from the very get-go. very sad, but seemingly the reality.</p>
<p>haha."</p>
<p>seriously. that's really disturbing. Wes is not the right place for you.</p>
<p>Really krongman? I think a lot of Wesleyan students to go to Wesleyan because it's a prestigious college and they do want to ultimately make a lot of money. That's why many people really go to these top colleges - for the social capital that will help them later and bring them to the top of their fields. And Wesleyan is good for that.</p>
<p>That said, most Wesleyan students, I think, do at least possess an awareness that this system is extremely messed up - that it's not really "fair". And many students do want to help reduce that inequality and income gap, instead of participating it, and <em>DO</em> go on to do great work - I think many more students from Wesleyan do so than at most top colleges. Still, we all are looking out for our own self-interest, and Wes students are generally not going to go on to work blue-collar jobs.</p>
<p>THAT said, you might be right that this is not the ideal school for sf606508. I'm about to comment on the other post about Middletown...</p>
<p>You know Madjoy....maybe Wesleyan wasn't right for my kid....call him naive but his college search in no way involved any concept of monetary or social elevation.........</p>
<p>it looks like there's a lot of simmering resentment in this section lately.</p>
<p>Kaydad, I don't think madjoy meant that exclusively. a lot of kids probably do go to Wesleyan for the prestige and because they think that will help them make money. a lot of kids probably also go there because they visited and fell in love with the school for reasons that had nothing to do with money or social elevation. it's probably the same for many similar colleges.</p>
<p>as for pomona vs wesleyan, I have no idea about professional school placement. wesleyan is tops in its economics department, apparently. i don't know much about pomona, but its neighbor school, claremont mckenna, is much more well known for its economics program. since those schools are all connected, i'd imagine most people at pomona who want to go into business take more classes at cmc than at pomona. make sense?</p>
<p>Kaydad - I don't think it's a conscious thing, for the most part. But how many people who look at top liberal arts schools expect to eventually work in retail, or in a factory plant, etc.? Wesleyan students are much more likely to be labor organizers than the labor being organized. I'm not saying it's not completely great that Wes students go on to be labor organizers - it IS great - but the system still has its issues. And the prestige of Wesleyan will definitely help one go where one wants to go; doors aren't really closed like they are for many people.</p>
<p>Upon re-reading my previous post I think it contained more hubris than intended. I was very impressed by Wesleyan and hoped my son might have the opportunity to attend. His attitude was " I'll see where I get in...then decide." Wesleyan wasn't an option and I know that's fine with him.......I on the other hand really thought Wesleyan would be a great fit and now I'm just wondering</p>