Wes' Prestige as recognized by oher colleges

Colleges and Universities A-Z Wesleyan University
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<p>@ JohnWesley</p>

<p>I don’t know. I haven’t taken many econ classes. The upper level courses in Gov are pretty damn hard - most of them require a 15-30 page paper as a final. Taking 2 upper level Gov courses with research papers at the end hurts. </p>

<p>@ljean</p>

<p>I’m spending next year abroad. Should be interesting. </p>

<p>@flying_pig</p>

<p>I feel really bad for you as a person because you’ve made Wesleyan out to be something in your mind - a very specific something, i.e. a place at which everything is perfect and all classes are small/intellectually stimulating/well-taught and the students are all brainy offbeat intellectuals who, nevertheless, rarely touch drugs or party - but when you get here you’re gonna inevitably discover that reality doesn’t conform to your perfect mental image. </p>

<p>On CollegeConfidential your opinion as a prefrosh is useful…to a degree, a limited degree. You can talk about objective statistics, you can talk about why YOU want to come here. But guess what? YOU DON’T GO HERE. You don’t have any direct experience at this school. You can only spit tired conventional wisdom and clich</p>

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<p>thanks, Mr. Pimpateer. I found taking a semester (or two) off after junior year especially (that’s a pretty long stretch with no break), pretty useful.</p>

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<p>MrPimpateer - While I appreciate your psychoanalysis of me and your obviously-heartfelt pity, I’m going to ask you to stop being a *****<em>. I obviously don’t think that Wesleyan is going to be “perfect” – I don’t know where you got that idea – and that “perfect” image you described doesn’t fit what I want in a college anyway. (But how would you know?)
I *have</em> noticed that nearly all of your posts are inflammatory or discouraging in some way to the OP, which can’t possibly be accurate but is much more likely just a way for you to vent. This one in particular I <em>knew</em> wasn’t accurate, because I have several friend who go to Wesleyan, one of whom is a social science major and very much enjoys her courses, so I felt obligated to say something. I wouldn’t, and haven’t, corrected you just because I didn’t like what you had to say; I only do it when I know you are incorrect. Additionally, I don’t pretend to be a current student: “Wesleyan 2013” is clearly typed below my usernames, and I preface many of my posts with “from what I have heard”. So calm down.
You’re the one I feel sorry for, spending time at a school you obviously loathe so much.</p>

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<p>@Flying_Pig</p>

<p>My young friend…</p>

<p>I offer my own individual perspective on Wesleyan. I have never purported to offer a “universal” opinion or one which was absolutely correct in every particular. The fact that they are my own opinion and NOT that of every person at Wesleyan is very clear. In those instances in which I tried to capture the prevailing feeling of the institution, the zeitgeist, it was clear that the opinion being expressed was one individual’s take on what that prevailing feeling is/was. In other words - I have never sought to speak for anyone but my own self, and I have never sought to profer anything other than a perspective (an often but not ineluctably contrarian one, at that). </p>

<p>Furthermore, I have tried to confine my observations to matters in which I have direct, personal, firsthand experience. That, while it does not automatically make my opinions correct, nevertheless it gives them some CREDIBILITY. It gives my opinion WEIGHT. It MEANS SOMETHING because I am here at Wesleyan, I went through these experiences or did these things or took these classes, and I had these reactions to them. My words are not gospel, they should be taken with a grain of salt; but like I said above, they’re my own individual opinion, and my opinion carries weight.</p>

<p>That’s all that needs to be said on the matter. </p>

<hr>

<p>As for the fact that you have a friend who’s a social science major here, and ze enjoys it, therefore I’m wrong/an idiot/unfailingly negative, well, let’s consider this idea. </p>

<p>You claim to have a single friend here at Wesleyan majoring in a social science. Let’s assume you’re not just making this up for the sake of argument. So just because that friend had a “good experience” with “a social science” means I’m wrong when I say that the environment for social scientific inquiry at Wes blows? </p>

<p>OK. I have said exactly which social sciences I am involved in, government and one history. I have given my impressions of my education here in those two fields. Not someone else’s experience, my experience. I evaluate the programs here based on having actually sat through the classes. </p>

<p>Here is what I have found: Wesleyan is a school which focuses much more on humanities than the social sciences. This is both a cultural thing (among students, it’s much more desirable to major in film than history, with the best minds consequently going to film rather than history) and a fact in terms of school resource allocation. The government department here is very small. There is NO International Relations major, as there are at larger schools. Rather, IR is folded in to the government department - there are less IR courses to take, and furthermore, there are less other government courses to take (on politics - comparative, American, and theory) because the Gov department has to support an IR wing. This weakens both programs, because resources have to get stretched farther in order to accomodate 2 totally different fields within one academic department. </p>

<p>As for the history department, there is a scattershot approach taken; there is incoherence within the department. Being a history major you can study anything from intellectual history (philosophy) to American history to Chinese history - but you can’t do it in depth. You can’t go deep, you can’t take more than an introductory course in many fields. My specific example is early modern European politics - there’s nothing to cover this other than a survey course and a couple courses on religion in that time period. </p>

<p>Owned.</p>

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<p>Can I just say that you’re full of crap, Mr_ Pimpateer?</p>

<p>Name me a school of similar size to Wesleyan that has more breadth in history classes. History is one of the biggest majors at Wes for a reason-- it’s great.</p>

<p>Seriously, you need to get a life. You ARE being “unfailingly negative.” Stop it. Please. You are not being at all helpful to people who come here looking for information.</p>

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<p>I’m going to weigh in on this conversation as a CURRENT student. I’d have to say that despite being only a pre-frosh, flying_pig’s discussions and descriptions about Wes have been far closer to my own true experiences than MrPimpateer’s. I think that your opinion of Wes is going to greatly differ depending on the “crowd” you’re in with and the specific courses you take. </p>

<p>No offense meant to MrPimpateer, but I’ve had very, very different social eperiences than you and have had excellent classes in the social sciences. I also live with a religion major, and he doesn’t really have any complaints. I’ll agree that History here isn’t the strongest, but Econ and Gov are excellent, with arguably the best professors at Wesleyan residing in the Econ department. I do think you’re wrong when you say the environment for social scientific inquiry blows. Maybe it doesn’t meet your ideals, but from what I gather, it does for most people. Again, I’m not posting to play devil’s advocate; I just want to let it be known that other, contrasting opinions (that carry weight) do exist.</p>

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<p>Also, I think you should consider yourself lucky that Wesleyan still counts History as a “social science” and not part of the humanities division. Imagine applying algorithmic formulas to the number of sheep produced in lower Saxony during the reign of Henry IV (or, otherwise trying to make it more statistics oriented.)</p>

<p>Seriously, Pimp, it really seems like you’re suffering from an extended case of sophomore slump. Go away and then come back. We’ll be here to welcome your perspective then. :)</p>

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<p>I’m also going to weigh in (as a current student - a senior who has been here for 4 years) that flying<em>pig’s descriptions match my own experiences way better than Mr</em>Pimpateer’s do. Also, as a sophomore (it sounds like), Mr_Pimpateer has not experienced social science classes at the upper level possibilities which are far more “in-depth” and thus his argument that “there are only intro classes” in a lot of subfields seems biased. </p>

<p>As a sociology major, I’ve had an amazing experience here. It’s true that because Wesleyan is a small school, our departments are necessarily smaller than that of a larger school - so for many subfields of each department only have maybe one professor representing it. For example, there’s one professor who studies the sociology of education, and one who studies the sociology of religion, etc. Then there’s Charles lemert, who is a famous social theorist and is the most ridiculous (in a good way) professor I’ve ever had. HOWEVER, this doesn’t mean that you’re only able to take the intro class in each subfield, because especially when you get into your junior/senior years and have already taken the intro classes, you aren’t limited by what’s in the course booklet. You can do a senior essay or senior thesis working one-on-one with an individual professor on a research project that interests you, or you can do an independent seminar or tutorial if a professor has something of particular interest to you. There are also small upper level topical seminars that kind of move with the interests of the students in the class.</p>

<p>I don’t know much about History or Government, but the Psych and Sociology departments are great. It’s especially easy to do research in the psych department if you’re interested. I also have a lot of friends who are involved in Econ research through the Quantitative Analysis Center summer program - it enables you to get a stipend to do research with a social science professor at Wes over the summer. It’s an awesome program and I highly recommend it.</p>

<p>Also:</p>

<p>You accuse flying_pig of mistakenly believing that Wes is “a place at which everything is perfect and all classes are small/intellectually stimulating/well-taught and the students are all brainy offbeat intellectuals who, nevertheless, rarely touch drugs or party”.</p>

<p>Other than the “rarely party” thing, that has actually pretty much been my experience. I’ve had pretty much an ideal “liberal arts college” experience here, and now that I’m leaving in a month and a half, I’m so sad to have to leave it behind. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine what Wesleyan could have done to improve my college experience. Sure, I had some tough times, got too stressed out, had friend drama, whatever - but it was all (a) stuff that everyone everywhere goes through and (b) my responsibility, not Wesleyan’s. If you don’t like the people you’re friends with, pimpateer, maybe you should find different friends? I’m not sure why you’re so bitter about the Wesleyan experience or even what exactly you think is so bad about the school. </p>

<p>But you know what? My classes are small. And intellectually stimulating. And with very few exceptions, well-taught. The students I’ve met mostly are intelligent offbeat intellectuals. Some of them know how to party and some of them prefer not to.</p>

<p>It sounds like you’re not enjoying Wes. Since you have two years left, maybe you should think about specific things that are making you unhappy, and try to fix them. Talk to that professor who taught the intro class about doing a tutorial next year in early modern European politics. maybe find friends who don’t do drugs all the time, if you hate the fact that your friends do drugs all the time (I promise you, most social circles here don’t). And while giving your perspective to people on CollegeConfidential is great, and it’s good to have someone say some of the negatives of the school on the site, making every single OP feel like they’d hate Wesleyan is not constructive. Obviously Wes is right for some people (like me, and probably flying_pig - I felt the same way ze did as a prefrosh) and maybe it’s not for others. But pooping on everyone’s dreams? Not cool, dude.</p>

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<p>A question for MrPimpateer: If you find yourself “miserable as all hell” at Wesleyan, what school do you wish you had chosen instead and why?</p>

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<p>While I also have to agree with Flyingpig, I think it is necessary to make some level of peace here because otherwise we will devolve to a flame war and, despite my overtly inflammatory behavior on-campus, I don’t think it’s a good idea if we start that just yet with the prefrosh.</p>

<p>MrPimpateer, I don’t know what your concentrations are in Government and History (funnily enough, both of those are also my two majors), but if your point is that not all concentrations are created equal, then you have a very solid point. Comparative Government is seriously impoverished at Wesleyan, and International Relations, while it benefits from people like Giulio Gallarotti (who has serious academic connections) and Douglas Foyle, is not as good as it would be at a larger school like Tufts. I grant you that. However, if someone wants to do Political Theory or American Government, this school is ideal. Teachers in both departments are absolutely phenomenal - in fact, I have done a one-on-one tutorial with John Finn for the purpose of fulfilling my American Government concentration and I think it would be much harder to have a similar experience at a larger school. Wesleyan rewards specialization, and early specialization, much more highly than other schools, and my generally positive attitude toward Wesleyan’s social sciences may come from the fact that I have barely set foot in any 200 level courses relative to the number of research seminars I take every semester, which are frankly the most engaging courses in any department. </p>

<p>Where History is concerned, Intellectual History is, in my admittedly biased opinion, Wesleyan’s most amazingly awesome concentration in any department. Yes, it involves an inevitable encounter with Cecilia Miller, but that is actually nothing at all to complain about. Miller was Isaiah Berlin’s last personal PhD student at Oxford, and she knows her stuff. She also actually challenges her students (in fact, she’s the first teacher I’ve felt challenged under). If you want an education, that’s exactly what you should be looking for. Much as I don’t like his ideology, I also have to point out, as per Madjoy’s comment about sociology, that Charles Lemert is one of the most respected figures in his field. The Econ Major is admittedly a little math-heavy, but with Professors like Skillman, Adelstein and Rodriguez (one of Hugo Chavez’s personal economic advisors), this isn’t necessarily a problem.</p>

<p>Also, Wesleyan’s social sciences are almost unique in how balanced they are and how open to intellectual diversity they are. For instance, even though Professor Finn is a raging liberal Larry Tribe fan, I was able to write paper after paper extolling the virtues of originalism in my tutorial with him, and he gave me still good grades and perceptive comments on all of them. And even he himself is not orthodox, as he teaches his students that Roe v. Wade is the worst case ever written, despite his liberal stance on abortion. That’s a phenomenon you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. In fact, the very fact that a right-wing reactionary like me can become a favorite of social science professors just as easily as a left-wing liberal is true testament to how amazingly open-minded Wesleyan’s faculty is, at least in most of the social sciences. I will be talking to President Roth about this tomorrow, in fact, and given that I am one of Wesleyan’s most active political figures, I think my credibility is not in question. Are my experiences representative? It depends who you’re talking about. But they are hardly unique, or impossible to attain. Students who come to Wesleyan expecting Professors to seek them out and coddle them will be disappointed - Students who actually know how to break the ice will be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams. It’s that simple.</p>

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<p>TheRightatWes – Really well put. I definitely agree with the last sentence.</p>

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<p>How would one go about breaking the ice?</p>

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<p>e-mails, e-mails, and more e-mails. and hopefully (but probably) a nice meeting. and if you happen to kick ass in the meeting, more great meetings to follow! (this is my experience w/ the science dept. other depts are probably similar, but less e-mails haha)</p>

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<p>btw please forgive mrpimpateer. as a close personal friend of his at wesleyan, he’s been through a trying time and also has not found what he’s wanted with wesleyan social sciences. the classes, from what i’ve heard (I actually don’t know a damn thing about them as a NS&B and music double major) are intellectually stimulating at higher levels, but have greater breadth (possibly at the expense of depth in specific topics) than some people may desire. wesleyan is not perfect, it doesn’t suck, and in reality you won’t be able to study <em>exactly</em> what you want to all the time but what you do study will be pretty damn quality.</p>