<p>The overlap in applicants/competition is more than you think. Surely not as much as Dartmouth/Middlebury/Bowdoin/Williams, but the next group of competitors with Amherst is Wesleyan/Vassar/Tufts, etc. Kids aren’t just choosing schools based on rank. The difference in education between Amherst and Wesleyan is the difference betweeen Harvard and Brown (aka not much).</p>
<p>Applicant overlap is quite a different animal than where people choose to go once admitted. There’s a much bigger difference between the stats of admitted and matriculated students at Wesleyan than those at Amherst.
On an unrelated note, I look back on my own application process and feel relief to have devoted so much less (read: orders of magnitude less) thought and effort to it than these poor kids today. At boarding school, we actually spent hours a week just talking about what mattered to us–no EC value there! Naively, I applied to Bowdoin as my one safety school; mercifully they let me in, as the five other schools I applied to, the ones I actually wanted to attend, (HY and AWS), all turned me down. Swarthmore was my DREAM school. Meeting several students who turned down Swat for Wes made me feel a bit better. I doubt that happens as much these days. Also, whereas I graduated PBK (and would have been summa if Wes had Latin honors) from Wes, I fear that Swat would have eaten me alive.</p>
<p>@wesleyan97
Amherst is one of about six schools in the country where just about everyone admitted can graduate debt-free. Given that, I’d be much more shocked if there <em>wasn’t</em> some marginal difference in the matriculation rates between Amherst and Wesleyan. In fact, judging by the order of magnitude of Amherst’s endowment overhang, Wesleyan must be doing something right, if not downright astonishing, with what little money (if you call $800,000,000, “little”) it does have.</p>
<p>I wasn’t talking about the difference in yield, though that’s obviously great, but rather the difference between the class rank and standardized test scores of admitted students versus those that choose to matriculate at Amherst and Wesleyan. At Amherst, the students that choose to matriculate have roughly the same stats as those that elect to go elsewhere; Wesleyan’s matriculating class, OTOH, has significantly lower class rank and somewhat lower test scores compared to those who decline Wesleyan’s offer. This suggests that many top students are applying to Wesleyan as a kind of “elite safety” compared to Amherst, where the accepted students choose other schools more for reasons of fit. </p>
<p>@wesleyan97
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<p>That could also mean that Wesleyan’s applicant pool is stronger. We already know it receives more applications.</p>
<p>Patently false. Compare the common data sets.</p>
<p>Rhetorical knavery doesn’t do our alma mater any favors, @circuitrider. The school has it rough right now compared to SWAPBM–not bone cancer rough or political rape in the Congo rough, more like a flat tire–and honest acknowledgment of that embodies the spirit of Wes far better than tap-dancing around reality.
I’ll admit to being provoked by @Englishman’s priggish tone and gleeful Schadenfreude. He strikes me as someone who would have been ridiculed at Wesleyan for the taxing load of pettiness he appears to lug around. Better for him and his spawn that he studied at a self-serious OxBridge college and s/he at Blah-mherst. </p>
<p>^The ability to match Amherst’s financial aid offers will fix that flat tire virtually over night.@</p>
<p>It goes beyond financial aid. Actually, let’s start with financial aid–Amherst is need-blind for internationals: NEVER gonna happen at Wes and unlikely at any other LACs (maybe Pomona or Williams can afford it). Aside from aid, there are physical plant issues to address. I was a science major and, despite the cosmetic enhancement to Hall-Atwater’s labs, the school would really benefit from a state-of-the-art new facility, particularly in view of the sciences being a major selling point for Wes. Also, we need to catch up with the funding available for summer internships, etc., from LACs with outsize endowments. Williams even has a fellowship (can’t remember the name) a small number of accepted first-years receive that pays for their graduate work! I imagine it’s targeted at students who would otherwise end up at HYP, but still quite a sweet deal!! I don’t know how they’re doing now, but some majors needed shoring up when I was there–math, computer science, and music for those with a classical Eurocentric focus. Even tiny Bowdoin had Western music offerings that put those of Wes to shame. I did love my gamelan and koto, though. In terms of housing, yeah the Foss Hill dorms aren’t pretty, but what really needs to go are lo- and hi-rise, neither of which befit a school of Wes’s (desired) stature. And maybe with some BIG money we could get coax Amtrak to run through Middletown! Open those pockets, Soros, Louis-Dreyfus, and Geraldine Laybourne.
I don’t know about @Englishman–he revels in the narcissism of minor differences I suppose. As for @hockeyboy, I can’t say–he probably would have gotten hate-laid (assuming he’s attractive) by a lot of women’s studies and psych/soc girls, but he would not have been liked.
And as I’ve mentioned several times before, it would be awesome if Wes pioneered a green materials engineering program. That would attract great faculty and students and contributions and funding, as well as engaging something urgent. </p>
<p>Every college has a wish list. Even Amherst. Really. This is where Cher slaps you across the face and says, “Snap out of it!”</p>
<p>And I would encourage the former Ms. Bono to slap the status-quo-defending complacency out of you.</p>
<p>Also, what I presented (Amtrak fantasy aside), was less a wish list than the bare minimum of what it will take to restore our footing alongside Amherst and Williams. We’ll never have Amherst’s great town or Williams’ gorgeous scenery or Swat’s arboretum, but we can and must innovate in directions that make up for that. Otherwise we’re destined to languish alongside Hamilton and Colby (no disrespect) and meekly aspire to achieve parity with Davidson and Vassar.</p>
<p>And Amherst is never going to have Wesleyan’s footprint in popular culture, unless it wants to be known as that jerk school that’s always comparing itself to Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Who cares about popular culture? It does little more than distract from the actual concerns of an era. Ever read Manufacturing Consent? Swarthmore gave us Jonathan Franzen, Amherst David Foster Wallace, Williams, Steven Sondheim, Brown, Jeffrey Eugenides. I’ll grant Wes Beasts of the Southern Wild (hopefully not a one-off), Mad Men and, hell, even Buffy, but what enduring works of art have alums created? I don’t see Akiva Goldman’s work having longevity, nor that of Joss Whedon post-Buffy (he’s making more money now but the product is diluted dreck); Michael Bay is a (profitable) punchline in the film world and a notorious douche. Viewers actively want to forget HIMYM, and Will & Grace now seems an exercise in commercialistic gay minstrelsy; in music, we have Santigold, MGMT, Amanda Palmer–all ephemera. Also, Wes is not an art school. It’s a seductive frill that some popular acts and TV people introduce Wesleyan to the public, but so far they don’t seem to be offering much more. You seem willing to go down with the ship as it is, while I want to bring it into dry dock and give it an overhaul. I believe my stance to be both more idealistic and more pragmatic. </p>
<p>I know. I know. And, Elia Kazan went to Williams. But, he loved his alma mater so much he gave his papers posthumously to Wesleyan. Honestly, you’re not going to get around Wesleyan by naming a few literary lions. I’ll eat your lunch.</p>
<p>He gave them to Wesleyan because it has a nice archive building, inaccessible and of little use to most people. Alluding to the film program only underscores its evanescence. With Basinger’s retirement or demise, Wesleyan will have lost its vital point of contact with Hollywood and probably many of the benefits that have come with that. Your silly posturing (“I’ll eat your lunch.”) betrays the insubstantial core of your argument. Please, Allah, Yahweh, Flying Spaghetti Monster, offer up a better spokesman for Wesleyan–or reform the existing one–so that I don’t feel compelled to return to this benighted place!</p>
<p>^You haven’t lived until you’ve read Kazin’s liner notes to Blanche DuBois’ entrance in Streetcar, in his own handwriting, going on for a full paragraph. You’ll have a better chance of doing so at Wesleyan than either Amherst or Williams.</p>
<p>Liv Ullmann’s direction of Cate Blanchett as Blanche made me forget that anyone else had played the role. Anyway Kazan was a nasty piece of work, appearing as a friendly witness at the HUAC. Williams has MassMOCA and produces world-class museum curators. I’m more impressed by that than the contents of a humidity controlled room of annotated screeplays and original storyboards and whatever else they preserve there. I hope that Wesleyan has been giving serious thought to the future of the film program. It is quite an asset but without leadership by a known quantity will sink into mediocrity.</p>
<p>Not likely. The film <em>program</em> is already attracting the likes of A.O. Scott to the faculty roster. The Film <em>Archive</em> isn’t a person; it’s a thing.</p>
<p>I hope you’re right, but she’s the driving force behind and the only “name” associated with the program. So while the major may retain its quality, it may lose its draw. Success in the film world hinges more than any other on the people you know. </p>