Our son was accepted to eight colleges. His top four are: Wesleyan, Vassar, Grinnell and Kenyon. He’s interested in psychology, philosophy, and performance studies (acting). Please weigh in on the strengths of programs at these schools. He will go and visit them all in the coming week, and hopefully come away with a sense of “best fit”. Grinnell and Kenyon have offered him substantial merit scholarships.
First - huge congrats to your son on four amazing acceptances!
I would say Vassar or Wesleyan for Psychology and Philosophy, and Kenyon and Vassar for acting (though Wesleyan is close behind).
So, I would recommend Vassar, after that Wesleyan, and then Kenyon. Grinnell comes in last. However, the differences are not huge - all would have excellent programs in all fields.
Merit scholarships are also important, which would tilt th echoice towards those which are the cheapest.
Are any of the other four even contenders?
4 Likes
Congrats, OP. I’m not surprised at all that the same kid would be admitted by Vassar and Wes, since they seem to be such similar schools.
For his interests, I’ll echo @MWolf mainly – Vassar and Wes are probably the two best options in terms of academic and performance fit. Kenyon would have a slight advantage over Grinnell, but Grinnell is a rich school and can afford to spend a lot on their kids. While I don’t have direct knowledge of their strength in his areas of interest, it’s likely that whatever they offer is quality.
What’s the COA of each school, and is cost important to you?
3 Likes
Theater and dance are pretty big at Wesleyan University as well as music. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mike White, Bradley Whitford, William Christopher (Father Mulcahey on MAS*H), Dana Delaney (Desperate Housewives, Body of Proof, Hand of God), Barton MacLane (played many classic film noir roles in the 1930s, 40s and 5Os) all graduated from Wesleyan as did an armful of Hollywood writers and directors collectively known as “The Wesleyan Mafia”.
2 Likes
Wow, it’s hard to choose and I’d weigh them all equally.
It’s very hard to turn down merit from two amazing colleges, and given they are both very respected and known, I can’t imagine paying full freight at either Wes or Vassar over substantial scholarships at the others.
Given that Grinnell is known for a slightly more creative student body than Kenyon, that would be my choice. All of those colleges are going to be excellent for those areas of interest. If theater is a really strong and important interest though, I think it’s hard to beat Wes.
4 Likes
Kenyon offers excellent programs in performing arts such as theatre and dance, as well as in studio art. For the creative arts across their spectrum, I’d place Kenyon perhaps at the top of this group of four schools. Of course Vassar, too, would be superb for theatre in particular. Wesleyan’s outstanding film program may be relevant to this decision as well.
5 Likes
Congratulations! Classy problem to have… If theater (combined with strong traditional academics) is the primary driver, it would be really hard to beat Wesleyan among the schools listed. There is a performance almost every week on campus. That said, I would not want to saddle my kid (or myself) with debt and Wes doesn’t do merit. It’s true that Wesleyan will meet full need, but their calculation may not be the same as yours. If you can make it work financially, Wes is a great choice. However, the other schools will still provide an excellent education and experience for your son.
5 Likes
My daughter chose Kenyon over Grinnell (back in 2020) partly because of its more creative vibe and the strength of its theater program. She has a couple of friends who are psychology majors (one of them is a psych/theater double major) and another friend who is a philosophy major. They sound happy with the programs, but I will admit that it’s a little hard to get into psychology courses (it didn’t help that Kenyon overenrolled in the last two years). All are great schools, of course (she only applied to Midwestern LACs because of merit and proximity to home). Great options to choose from, congrats!
4 Likes
My son was interested in both Wesleyan and Kenyon especially for their enthusiastic support of the arts — visual arts in his case. He ended up choosing another LAC but no doubt would have been happy at either.
We didn’t visit Grinnell, but I would note that Kenyon (and presumably Grinnell) are insular campuses. For my outdoorsy nature loving son that was a plus but others may prefer closer proximity to town/city life. A visit usually clarifies.
4 Likes
Thanks for this feedback. These are the ones he’s most interested in. He was also accepted at UC Santa Cruz, Reed, Lewis and Clark, and University of Hawaii Mānoa. But I think he’s attracted to the smaller liberal arts colleges which, based on his interests, seem like the best options.
We are trying to not let the merit scholarship be the only determiner here – even though it’s hard to turn down 32K a year from places like Grinnell.
I have to admit I don’t know many specifics about any of these places other than Wes and perhaps Vassar, but given the strength of Wesleyan’s alumni and facilities across the arts (numerous recent alumni who are top-level actors, directors, playwrights, visual artists, musicians, etc.) it’s hard to imagine a better LAC with these interests. Wes is also a top producer of eventual PhDs in psychology (right behind Kenyon and Grinnell, significantly ahead of Vassar).
1 Like
See this post for Vassar’s strength in Psychology
Vassar also has a number of famous alumni in the arts, see
You have a great set of choices, I don’t think you can really go wrong with any of them!
1 Like
What a great problem to have! This group often strains at gnats - looking for tiny differences between fantastic schools. Beyond a certain point, the differences between elite national liberal arts colleges are differences of atmosphere and “fit” - that nebulous term that we all use to think about where a student would be happiest. All four schools would give a fantastic education that would be among the best in the world. All four would have wonderful and thoughtful peers, and magnificent faculty who have devoted their lives to the academic mentoring of young people.
It is a luxury to be able to fixate of fit. Thank goodness my children’s opportunities were all within a narrow monetary range. If there had been a vast difference, I wonder how much “fit” would have been subordinated to cost? (In part the kiddos avoided this by applying to schools with similar financial aid policies). I have some experience with all of these schools except for Kenyon, and I have friends who went there. I’m sure all four offer top-notch educations.
That said - in thinking of your four year experience, another data point is endowment per student. Grinnell is no. 9 in the US, at 1.4 million per student. Vassar is 45th, at $452,000/student. Wesleyan is 63rd at $330,000, and Kenyon is 84th at $225,000. This translates into the availability of funded opportunities over the summer, faculty pay (and the likelihood that stars stay), etc.
Of course, I still couldn’t convince my children to go to Iowa, even though I had some wonderful years living there myself, and if I could go to college all over again, it would be hard to turn down Vassar if I had a chance.
3 Likes
I can’t speak for Vassar and Kenyon, but the endowment per student rule-of-thumb can be a little misleading. For example, Wesleyan University is twice the size of Grinnell , but actually has a better student faculty ratio. The reason Wesleyan gets away with spending more on faculty than a college with twice its endowment is because the larger university can save on economies of scale on things like support staff, maintenance, food and other non-teaching activities. And Wesleyan’s summer research is supported almost entirely by competitive outside grants.
Where Grinnell does outspend it rivals is in the area of merit scholarships. According to its own website, every first-year student is considered for merit-based aid and nearly half of all current students receive some form of merit aid, with an average award of ~$8,000.
1 Like
Wesleyan’s student to faculty ratio at 8:1 is marginally better than Grinnell’s at 9:1, but both values are considered excellent.
1 Like
How big a deal is the difference in net prices?
Looks like we would be paying full at Wesleyan and Vassar. Grinnell offered him 32k merit scholarship per year for four years; Kenyon offered him 16k merit scholarship per year, for four years.
To which I would be tempted to tell my children how lovely Grinnell is in the fall 
I had a friend who made this offer to his child: If he attended School A (much less expensive), he would put 1/2 the money saved by not attending School B into an account that the student could use for travel, experiences, etc., and the remainder would be turned over to him upon graduation. The student chose School A. Ran a marathon in Hawai’i, studied abroad twice, travelled throughout the US, and went to grad school with no debt, and quite the reverse, a cushion of funding to add to his grad assistantship.
But if the child had chosen to do so, he could’ve gone to the more expensive school, no complaints.
1 Like
I love love this idea! A kid smart enough to get into these schools should be smart enough to understand what attending school A vs B means to to the family finances (and that this is a family decision).
Hello Grinnell!!!
3 Likes