<p>So..did any of you read this book? It provides juicy details on how admissions work, particularly for this school.</p>
<p>Would you reccommend it? I need some good books for the summer. I'm worried that it will be really scary to see what they do with our applications...maybe ignorance is bliss haha</p>
<p>I just read it. It's a good read even if you're not in the deathgrip of the college application process at the moment. It actually made me feel better about my chances in general, although I hadn't realized what a big role connections play.</p>
<p>Personally, I loved the book and I've actually read it more than once. Well, it opens the world of college admissions to the applicant and you realize things that you would never have thought to be true.</p>
<p>i loved the book, i found it pretty interesting and enjoyable.</p>
<p>I read the book--it's actually what got me really interested in Wes before I even knew Wes existed.</p>
<p>Read it! It's a great book.</p>
<p>i definitely recommend it, david.</p>
<p>I just bought it! Can't wait to read</p>
<p>Honestly, I won't be able to read it until the whole applying to college thing is over with; its a little nervewracking reading about college admissions when you yourself are just about to go through it. So maybe when the acceptance letters start rolling in I'll loosen up and take a look. I've had the book forever now on the shelf.</p>
<p>I read it long after I'd already enrolled at Wes. In retrospect it made me feel like I should've been more confident than I was about the admissions process. Particularly the part where they describe the various "hurdles" they expected students to jump over: 4 years of foreign language, all three of biology, chemistry, and physics, math through calculus, etc. and I'd done all of them.</p>
<p>For those people who are going to by apply in this coming year, I think you should read it. It'll really give you a lot of insight into what admissions officers are thinking about when they read th apps, and knowing that would definitely help you construct a better application.</p>
<p>i have a question: it seems really weird to me how obsessed wesleyan is with calculus. They even have as a statistic one their site how many kids take calculus. I dont know any other schools that do this. My questoin is: if Im not a math person at all and i just have through precalc will they care a lot?</p>
<p>Yes it's a great book, I'm glad you all liked it too. Definently read it if you haven't, you'll learn a lot about how these admissions works, and factors you may have thought were never important actually play a role and might help you "better" your application if you haven't applied already. If you already applied and don't want to get scared or something, reading it after the letters come through is still a good idea too. It's a great book to read for all. </p>
<p>David: Maybe because it's a liberal arts school, and not many kids take calculus, and if this is a top college for an applicant, they may think that taking calc is unnecessary for a liberal arts school. but taking calculus and applying shows you are doing everything you can to be one the best applicants ever, even if you're stronger in humanities and the languages. And this may show greater "intellectual curiosity". Just a guess though.</p>
<p>"Liberal arts" includes math. They want applicants to have taken the hardest curriculum possible which at most high schools means calc. And BTW, >70% of enrolled students have taken calc and a considerable portion of freshmen who haven't taken it take MATH 121/122 either to satisfy the NSM requirement, or premed requirements, or something like that. So it's not like "very few" people take it. 25-30% of the students major in an NSM division department and the admissions office and the dean of the sciences are currently trying to assert that we're #1 among LACs in science, so it kind of makes sense.</p>
<p>"My questoin is: if Im not a math person at all and i just have through precalc will they care a lot?"</p>
<p>If you have other great qualities, they're willing to overlook it. I didn't take Calc (nor did I take a fourth year of a foreign language), but I was accepted. Don't get discouraged if you're not a math person. :)</p>