<p>hi! i'm applying to college for c/o 2019, and i can't decide if i should add wesleyan to my list. can anyone tell me if you think it would be a good fit? some information: sat 2290 / 790 and 780 for subject tests, interested in IR / anthro / japanese. i'm doing chicago EA, and am looking for a school that is intellectual, academically rigorous, fun, and unpretentious (??). liberal, activist types would be interesting too. other schools i'm applying to include tufts / berkeley / brown. </p>
<p>also, are frats / drugs a big deal at wes? </p>
<p>Sounds like Wes is right up your alley. Like most other schools on your list, drugs are as big or a little a deal as you want them to be - easily avoided, if it’s not your thing, and plenty of other people there feel similarly. There are only a few frats at Wes, and the administration is deciding whether to get rid of them altogether. Again, easily avoided if you don’t want anything to do with them. </p>
<p>thanks! that’s reassuring 
any ideas for a school similar to wesleyan in terms of what i’ve described above? also suburban / relatively near to a city + not too small </p>
<p>Often described as intellectual (and lots of applicant overlap with Brown and Wesleyan):
Vassar (suburban NY), Swarthmore (just outside Philly), Oberlin (near Cleveland), Reed (Portland, OR)… though how small is too small? Wesleyan and Oberlin are 2,800 students; Vassar 2,400; Swarthmore 1,600; Reed 1,400. All of these schools are smaller than the ones you listed and aren’t as urban as UChicago or the others in your initial post, but would meet your other requirements fairly well, I think. I’m mostly only familiar with liberal arts colleges</p>
<p>You might want to look at Brandeis. Both my son and a good friend of his have Brandeis and Wesleyan as their top choices. BTW, when his friend visited University of Chicago, she said that they kept referring to themselves as the “Brandeis of the midwest.”</p>