the ussnooze rankings have done so much to promote and inspire entertainment here on the wesleyan board.
wes in general has provoked some elite comedy over the years, much from long before i heard of this place and probably 2 or 3 owners ago, gloriously preserved from the good old days of a more human interaction–‘shabby, rundown motel’ ‘wesleyan needs’ ‘what happened’–but the LIST often seems to enervate a jolt of epic whinge, though this year it is a bit more celebratory than history would suggest.
the ussnooze rankings have done so much to promote and inspire entertainment here on the wesleyan board.
wes in general has provoked some elite comedy over the years, much from long before i heard of this place and probably 2 or 3 owners ago, gloriously preserved from the good old days of a more human interaction–‘shabby, rundown motel’ ‘wesleyan needs’ ‘what happened’–but the LIST often seems to enervate a jolt of epic whinge, though this year it is a bit more celebratory than history would suggest.
@Catcherinthetoast , how do you like that ^ for a couple of Wesleyan $5 words?
Still, not only are the data problematic, even with perfect data, the rankings are meaningless since the are tryonf to be “one Rank To Rule Them All”. Different students and different parents want and need different things, and different things are important to them. The college rank is based on the preferences and ideology of the persons who create them, or their bosses.
No parent of prospective student should think about finding “the best” college, unless it’s “the best college for them”. Standardized ranking systems are never trying to determine the latter, which is what is needed.
Question for the Wesleyan experts here: did they get rid of evaluative interviews? Can no longer find reference to them in the admissions section, and this page (which I bookmarked in the spring) is throwing an error: https://admission.wesleyan.edu/portal/onlineinterview
I have heard that in prior years interviews booked up quickly. Can anyone confirm that that they are no longer part of the process?
When my D23 applied last year (was admitted RD but did chose a different school), she had an interview with a current student who was working for admissions. So there are interviews – at least there were last year – and the interviewer surely adds notes and impressions to the admissions file, but I suspect they are not evaluative. I recommend booking one if you can, though, as a way to get to know the college and demonstrate interest,
It’s possible that what I’m calling an interview was what the website calls a “Weschat” – my daughter booked the appointment (I didn’t). But it was one-on-one, so it seemed like other interviews she had at other schools, most of which were conducted by either current students or alums, and none of which were considered evaluative, which to me means that they wouldn’t move the needle on your application to a significant degree.
I believe I remember seeing reference to optional, evaluative interviews with current students or alumni on the admissions site for last year’s cycle, which is why I had bookmarked the scheduling page.
It seems like the “evaluative” part (and alumni role) has been dropped in favor of WesChats, which are not evaluative to highly encouraged.
But they’ve wiped all of the evaluative interview references from the site, so I also could be making it up!
Wes CDS says it does not consider demonstrated interest, but then on the page you shared, it says, “Wesleyan does not offer evaluative interviews for first-year applicants as part of the admission process. However, applicants are highly encouraged to take advantage of other opportunities to engage 1-on-1 with members of our community.”
Not that these two ideas can’t co-exist, but it sure seems like scheduling a WesChat is important….
the interviews are done with seniors who are part of the admissions dept crew, like the most seasoned tour guide types and whatnot.
the language about no required and/or evaluative interviews has been the same for a while now.
keep in mind that the schedule for these student interview things usually fills up REALLY fast, so if wes becomes a a big part of your college aspirations as the first of the year/application deadline approaches, well, you’re prob not gonna get an interview.
there are also some opportunities for less rigidly-scheduled peer chats arranged online through the website and done via email with the students on the admissions office crew who can answer questions and stuff, much as they would on a tour.
make wesfriends on your weschats.
(edit: now i see that the student interviews ARE called weschats. absolute madness. so if the interviews are weschats, what are the one-on-one emails called?? westalks? wesvice?)
the admissions office also does some online seminar-type programs where you sign up to attend on the internets machine. not sure if this is more focused on prospective applicants or admitted students at wes–it all runs together after a while, and some schools have different priorities.
irregardless sic if wes looks good to you, as previously stated, yes, definitely sign up early for one of those interviews if you can.
wesleyan admissions are wicked hard to game once rd rolls around & anything and everything you can do is prob worth it.
Not sure when you were at Wes, but the financial-aid situation was largely the same then as now–great for low-income families and rich families (full pay) and quite rough to varying degrees on upper middle class families. Wes was still need-blind when I applied, but not for me as a transfer from Bowdoin. I don’t know if Wes has ever been need-blind for transfers. My grants were huge at Bowdoin and Wes, with minimal loans and the largely symbolic student contribution. Even before Wes implemented no-loan packages for families who make below some threshold (which I can’t remember), loans never played a huge role at Wes. The fin. aid office does a decent job, I think, of evaluating what a family can afford. Please let me know if you understand this differently. Perhaps the pattern you’re observing has more to do with increasing wealth disparity than institutional policy. Speaking of wealth disparity, it’s insane how high the endowments/student at Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore, Wellesley, and Bowdoin (among a few others) have gotten, itself a reflection of the accelerated uncoupling of the “haves” from the “have nots.” Wesleyan has been holding its own but still needs to roughly double its endowment to be in the same situation as those schools. I am as ever embarrassed to care about how my alma mater is ranked, but Wes was very good to and for me and it’s been hard watching it languish for so many years >10 spots lower than when I attended, especially when some of the schools “beating” it were unknown to me: Hamilton, Colgate, Washington and Lee (?!), University of Richmond (!!). In retrospect, it’s funny that Bowdoin was my safety when it was ranked 4th, a fact I was oblivious to until a boarding-school friend approached me at lunch with the U.S. News rankings (which I’d never see) and told me to stop complaining about not getting into Harvard and Williams, both of which would have been terrible fits for me. I wish Wes could find an author to fit the Annie Dillard “slot” that influenced many of us to apply there. For a brief time, when at the height of her powers (Teaching a Stone to Talk, Holy the Firm), she was arguably the best prose stylist in English. She, the lovely Phyllis Rose, and Jan Willis (a real mentor to me) made Wesleyan feel like such a special place. Others felt the same way about Janine Basinger, but despite (or, given her tastes, perhaps because) being a cineaste, I knew nothing of her. Others had apparently life-changing experiences with John Perry Barlow (who was only there for one or two of my years, I think), Tololyan, as well as the late Hope Weissman and Christina Crosby (what a nightmare she endured and with astonishing generativity), and others.
Phyllis Rose was there when I was there and already earning a loyal following. As was Jeanine who now has an entire building complex named after her.
Well, you’ll have to be more specific about what it is you find “shocking” about the number of students requesting “federal financial aid”. I thought you meant shocking in a bad way.
USNews specifically made mention this year that it was removing endowment per student as a metric, presumably to concentrate on the return on the investments (e.g., marginal graduation rates and future salaries of first-generation students) rather than making a fetish out of comparing sizes.
Shockingly small percentage (38-39%) compared with Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Swarthmore, Vassar, Carleton, Davidson, Haverford, etc., all of which have 49-61% of students receiving need-based aid. No bueno.
