At Wesleyan I like the LAC feel (small classes, ability to connect with professors, know your classmates). I don’t like the campus and I think Middletown is isolated. Also Wesleyan has a strong economics program.
At UT, I have to study communications before trying to transfer into economics. How difficult will that be? That’s the only knock I have on UT right now. I like the culture, campus and the location. I also think I will be able to do well despite the large population.
these are VERY different schools. Very.
Wesleyan has a bad rap for an ugly campus. Personally I thought it was perfectly fine, and I really like their housing system as you get to upperclass years.
It is def risky heading to UT and hoping to transfer into a competitive major. Have you looked into how competitive Econ is there? Certainly the business school is very hard to get into. So you might need to decide what’s more important to you- academics and career positioning (W), versus social fit and location (UT).
You seem to like Wes- I don’t think it’s campus is a dealbreaker and I felt like Middletown had enough cute bars and restaurants to make it through 4 yrs.
You like Wesleyan. I promise you will find things to do. No one would go there otherwise.
You are not in your desired major at UT. While you say you can do well, you won’t have small classes, at least early, and it will be more difficult, but not impossible to connect with professors.
Unless there’s a cost issue here (and if UT is in state maybe there is), how could you even consider UT ?
My daughter will be at U of Texas in the fall. I’m a big fan of LACs but UT has a program my daughter is interested in that isn’t commonly found at LACs. UT has been working hard to up the quality of undergraduate teaching and provide smaller group options within larger classes.
I’m hearing a lot of contradictory feelings here. The OP likes the “LAC feel” of Wesleyan but doesn’t like the campus or the small, isolated town. Westerners often equate “old and historic” with “run-down”. And the small town? That’s 50% of the typical LAC experience, IMO.
An honors college will give you access to professors and you can have your big campus and crowded restaurants and bars at the same time. I don’t recommend going to Wesleyan with reservations; it appeals to a very open-minded, experimental type of person and there’s no guarantee that you will grow to like it.
Regarding Middletown, it’s certainly not Austin, Texas, but I wouldn’t use the word “isolated” to describe it. I reserve that word for schools like Williams , Colgate and Hamilton, but certainly not Wesleyan. It’s 15 to 20 minutes from Hartford, 30 min. from New Haven and 40 minutes from the string of Connecticut coast towns and small cities. I’m not sure I’ve been anywhere in state of Connecticut and felt the need to use the word “isolated”. Upstate and western NY? Yes. Western Mass? Yes. Ct.? Not so much.
From a campus standpoint, it’s certainly more eclectic and less “matchy matchy” than UT, for sure. You have classical Greek revival, Georgian, Gothic, Modern and other architectural styles that I can’t name all on the same small stamp of land. Wesleyan is one of those schools that can be made to look beautiful in a photo layout by choosing your angles, but when you’re there and looking at something beautiful there is almost always something more “real life” and less collegiate fantasy land right next to it or nearby. And the campus layout feels a bit ad hoc. With that said, it has its moments and its angles, and I would tell you as a person who is a fan and consumer of campus aesthetics, a crisp sunny fall day at Wes with a game happening on Andrus is about as cool a collegiate scene as I’ve experienced, and I went to a large and beautiful research university with a football stadium set on a lake shore with mountains (real ones, not the hills in the east people tend to misname) and water views in all directions. But if you don’t like it, you don’t like it, so that’s ok.
With that said, they are different places, although I think it’s perfectly to like two different places. There’s no law that says if you like a LAC in New England that you can’t also like a large state flagship in Texas. I’ve never really understood that stance.
Setting finances aside, a topic on which I don’t tend to weigh in, this is a can’t lose choice. They’re both great schools and you’ll be educated beautifully at either. If you are not from New England, it is an experience going to school there, so that is one factor in favor of Wes unless you’d really rather stay in Texas. Going away for 4 years has its advantages (and its hidden costs!).
Rome was not built in a day and neither was Wesleyan. For its first one hundred years, there were few collegiate settings outside of Harvard Yard that could compete with Wesleyan’s country Gothic campus set back on a street lined with fine Victorian houses. The real challenge, as with all the small New England campuses, came when it needed to expand over a hilly terrain. In Wesleyan’s case, it meant deciding whether to ignore the hills and develop a conventional “beaux arts” quadrangle with all the buildings facing each other on an axis or to embrace the hillsides by building on top of them and keeping the sightlines clear? Visitors don’t quite “get it” until they see that vast greensward filled with football fans on the weekend and again at Commencement with smiling families taking pictures against a backdrop of Van Vleck Observatory on one side and The Row on the other.
It is interesting that, in a comparison of Wesleyan to Texas, two consecutive posts reference (as a plus in the Wesleyan column) the college football gameday experience at Andrus field. I had to Google it. It is less impressive than most (I’m not being hyperbolic when I say most) Texas high school football stadiums. That includes the area around the field.
I have a feeling that if the people in awe of the gameday experience at Wesleyan came to Austin this fall when the Longhorns host Alabama, their heads would explode.
Yeah, this is a real snapshot taken by Yours Truly. People standing on sod for hours on end tend to have that effect. And, yes, Wesleyan was an early adopter of modern architecture in the mid-1950s (just about when Motel 6s were coming online.) Modern engineering techniques (most notably the use of poured concrete) enabled it to extend the entire campus right to the edge of the other side of that hill.
I think you miss the point … entirely. Comparing these events is about as pointless as comparing the people who make up the teams.
I’ve been to the Red River Shoot-Out (including last year’s) and I’ve been to more big-time CFB games than you can shake a stick at, and of course UT was in none of them, as it overwhelmingly tends to be. For big-time game day experience, Texas is good, but there are better. And everybody is well aware of the ridiculous amount of money poured into, and priority made of, Texas High School football.
Having said all that, I leave you with these unrelated points of consideration: (1) a game day experience between Wesleyan and Williams or other NESCAC rival at Andrus Field, where they’ve been playing football a good bit longer than UT has been in existence, is a different kind of experience and is fantastic on its own merits; and (2) Alabama is going to do your Longhorns a huge favor and accelerate the process of Steve Sarkisian’s inevitable demise.
The very idea of someone describing a singular patch of balding grass as “gross” on the back of an assertion about the great state of Texas, a “patch” of land as full of ugly as there exists in the Union. Laughable.
Texas won the greatest CFB of all time in Jan of 2006, played for a title in 2009 and just a few years ago had a Sugar Bowl win against a top 5 Georgia team and ended the season with double digit wins. Texas is also one of the leaders in all-time CFB wins and winning %. Surely, you can appreciate the colossal comedy in multiple posters, during a comparison of Texas & Wesleyan, bringing up CFB as a check in the column for Wesleyan.
I agree, I’ve been to better game day environments than Texas, but my goodness…that gross Wesleyan campus picture that was posted earlier is all anyone needs to see. I just feel sorry for the kids trapped there for 4 years. It looks like a Soviet toilet factory.
As for your last couple of points…Sark was a terrible hire and the Longhorns will likely be worse this year than last. I look forward to his firing. But don’t let your bias against world class universities in great cities reach such an insane level that you stand behind silly things…like Wesleyan having a gameday experience than compares to any real program.
