What has happened to Wesleyan?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Wesleyan University
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<p>I am a rising senior who has just completed a round of vistits to Ivy League schools and top LACs (Amherst, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Wesleyan, Williams and Yale). I am interested in rowing in college but I'm not sure whether to do this in a D1 or D3 program. I expect to come to a decison on this in the fall.
Of the schools I visited, I was most underwhelmed with Wesleyan, a place I expected to like. The campus was relatively unattractive, its facilities a bit tattered and the students with whom I spoke were desultory and appeared, for the most part, out of the main stream. The whole environment seemed to me of lesser quality. I asked my Dad how Wesleyan could diverge so much from the other schools despite the differences among them. </p>

<p>He said that a generation ago Wesleyan was on equal footing with Amherst and Williams - the so-called Little Three. Wesleyan, however, did not improve at the same pace as Amherst and Williams, in part because of its more limited finances, and has been overtaken by LACs like Pomona, Swarthmore, Middlebury and Bowdoin in academic quality. He also said the faculty had politicized Wesleyan in the 80s and 90s, veering the school in a leftward direction, a direction that has been difficult for the administration to counter. As a result, Wesleyan has become, over time, a niche school with admission overlaps at Brown, NYU, Vassar, Oberlin and Bard and not with the Ivies and Amherst/Williams. That in fact, Wesleyan is in a different league. </p>

<p>Is this so?</p>

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<p>If you visit any small college during the summer, of course, all that will distract your attention will be the paint literally drying on the sides of buildings. While Williams and Amherst have been pouring money into questionable building projects, Wesleyan has been putting its money into program. Today, thanks to major investments in graduate programs, Wesleyan attracts three times as much National Science Foundation money as Amherst or Williams.</p>

<p>That translates into more research opportunities for undergraduates; more access to professors working on publishable work all year-round – not just during summer breaks; and, more resume-boosting publishing opportunities for you. </p>

<p>Secondly, the Ivy League is far from uniform in terms of fit and general atmosphere and at most, what your father is describing is a general rift between the northern New England “bro” culture of winter carnivals and prep school athletics and the more progressive face of academia pioneered by Brown and Wesleyan. </p>

<p>Wesleyan and Brown developed along very similar lines as flagship sectarian colleges and became increasingly secularized as the United States in general began to expect more from its elite colleges than simply reproducing the same “gentleman athletes” of years past. They began eliminating distribution requirements and experimenting with alternatives to traditional grading back in the sixties and kick-started the quest to diversify elite college student bodies.</p>

<p>Wesleyan pioneered in placing the performing arts on the same footing as science, the humanities and social sciences, the traditional" three legged stool" of the liberal arts and sciences and today the results can be seen in venues such as Broadway and Hollywood. Six Wesleyan graduates have recently been nominated for Emmy Awards.</p>

<p>Obviously, a place that encapsulates a challenging artistic, social and laboratory science milieu isn’t necessarily for everyone. If you want to avoid people who consider themselves environmental activists or “fair wage” activists or who are otherwise “out of the mainstream”, there are plenty of places to choose from in today’s political climate.</p>

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<p>John Wesley, as usual, has nailed it.</p>

<p>I was at a Wesleyan Summer Send-Off Party in the San Francisco Bay area a few weeks ago-- every summer, Wesleyan holds a number of get-togethers for incoming first year students to give them a chance to get acquainted. Provost Rob Rosenthal was there, as well as a few people from admissions, along with about thirty students and their parents. The kids were as far away from desultory as one could get. Very engaging, smart, friendly and with a very wide range of interests–from hard sciences to art to economics to pre-med. A recent grad from Oakland spoke who was a double major in economics and neuroscience. The parents ranged from big-firm lawyers to school teachers to management consultants and surgeons. And the party was hosted by a very gracious (and quite well-to-do) family whose son is a current Wesleyan student. </p>

<p>If there was anything second-tier there, it sure wasn’t apparent. But I would say that Wesleyan is decidedly not for everyone. The incurious would not enjoy being there very much, nor would the intolerant or the snobs. To say that Wesleyan is homogeneously left-wing or “PC” is ludicrous, and if it were, half of the folks at that party would not fit in. </p>

<p>And by the way, speaking of Swarthmore–one of the kids was an incoming transfer student from–you guessed it–Swat.</p>

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<p>I am with you Hockey Kid - toured this school recently
so underwhelmed. I really expected to love it but didn’t
tour guides seemed rehearsed, some what unhappy with administration and just didn’t seem to love the school. When pressed to talked about what could be improved, she said “oh, I can’t think of anything.” Also, bungled questions about T.A.'s saying school doesn’t use them to teach and then two minutes later saying a T.A. taught her foreign language class all semester! Seemed so phony and/or uninformed. Maybe another tour guide or a visit back to talk to prof. or other students might help but too many other colleges that are getting a better message out there. Sorry, I don’t love “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” and that might have impressed ten years ago but now “Yawn!”</p>

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<p>^^Television shwos and or movies currently in release at box office, on cable or with commercial sponsorship and earning money for Wesleyan graduates:

  1. “Transformers, Dark Side of the Moon”
  2. Mad Men
  3. How I Met Your Mother
  4. “Thirty Minutes or Less”
  5. Modern Family
  6. Project Runway
  7. Robot Chicken
  8. The Daily Show</p>
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<p>summer tours really dont capture a school, you MUST MUST MUST visit when classes are in session, that way you will get a real feel of the school. im attending wesleyan this fall but when i visited Hopkins last summer during my app. process i found the tour guides and everybody i saw really really preppy and very talkative. I visited again during october to decide if i wanted to do ED but a handful of the kids i saw especially in the sciences were really like hockeykid said, really in a sense kinda inarticulate and boring</p>

<p>just a little anecdote to show that summer visits dont capture the atmosphere of a school very well at times</p>

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<p>My question is “why is homogeneously left wing any better or worse than homogeneously yachting club, gentlemen athlete, headed for Wall Street” culture at the schools the OP seems to prefer?</p>

<p>And I don’t see Brown, Vassar, NYU, Oberlin, Wesleyan “in another league” from Columbia, Amherst, Yale, etc. No Skull and Bones, perhaps? Is that a loss?</p>

<p>And if you’re really a “Hockeykid” why are you bothering with the Ivies? You should be looking at D-1 state university powerhouses like North Dakota, Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine and Minnesota. </p>

<p>Trying to draw a line between highly selective LACs is totally subjective and kind of 
 snobby?</p>

<p>Anyway, to each his own. When my daughter visited the New England LACs, she thought the atmosphere snobby at all of them except Wesleyan.</p>

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<p>When our family visited Wesleyan the fall of DS’s high school senior year, we were decidedly underwhelmed due to an unappealing tour guide and a very “politically correct” info session. He would have crossed it off his list after that visit, but had already submitted the application so kept it in play. When he was admitted in the spring, tok a second look and got a completely different impression- campus looked beautiful, students smart and fun, great classes. He is now a senior at Wes and has thrived, matured, had a great time, expanded his world view, and overall had a wildly positive experience that could not have been predicted by our first visit. YMMV.</p>

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<p>HockeyKid, your assumption that Wesleyan students are “out of the main stream” and “left”-- is completely unfounded because there is not ONE Wesleyan student. There will be students on all sides of the spectrum and it is foolhardy to make generalizations about the entire student body after only meeting one student. The student body and our atmosphere, in my opinion, are the best things about Wesleyan. </p>

<p>Others have mentioned it before, but I must reiterate its importance: visit during the school year, sit in on a class, do an overnight visit. I’m not talking solely about Wesleyan, but all schools that you are interested in. However, it sounds like you are more interested in the name of the school that you attend rather than the substance, so Wesleyan probably wouldn’t be a good place for you. </p>

<p>Acenoneking- How did your tour guides seem unhappy with the administration, what did they say for you to make that assumption? Additionally, TA’s will NEVER teach a class. Will there be TA sessions multiple times a week (either mandatory or optional)? Definitely. So could a TA potentially help you grasp the material better your professor? Sure, TA’s get the job because they have taken the class before and have done extremely well in it, usually receiving the best grade in the class. So that makes me wholeheartedly doubt your statement that a tour guide said that the “T.A. taught her foreign language class all semester”—it simply would never happen here.</p>

<p>I truly believe that Wesleyan is a special place, but it also takes a special person to realize and appreciate that and it simply isn’t for everyone.</p>

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<p>*a word of explanation here: the TAs to which jhairx23 is referring, are not necessarily graduate students, and perhaps that is where the confusion originated during the tour. More often than not, they are undergraduates who are paid to engage their fellow students in conversational French, Spanish and Italian, for one session a week. It’s actually a great opportunity for romance language majors and I think they make the sessions a little more relaxing for the students.</p>

<p>The term, Teaching Assistant, is normally used to describe a doctoral degree candidate. At <em>some</em> universities they may be in charge of the teaching of class sections. That normally doesn’t happen at Wesleyan without faculty supervision.</p>

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<p>^^In fact, because Wesleyan is such an overwehlmingly undergraduate focused institution, don’t be surprised if you hear the term “TA” used in other unusual contexts, almost always involving an undergraduate in some sort of faculty supervised teaching experience.</p>

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<p>To be clear, I visited all the schools in the spring when classes were in session and have, this summer, revisited a sub-set of the schools, primarily, though not exclusively, to learn more about each school’s rowing program. My visit to Wesleyan included attending the information session, going on the campus tour, sitting in on two classes, staying over night in a dorm, and spending an afternoon at a lacrosse game with a couple of kids from my high school who were then freshmen. My observations, while circumscribed by the nature of these types of visits, weren’t based on a summer fly-by. </p>

<p>I will also say that I have spent a fair bit of time at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, schools I think most would agree are fairly diverse and well outside of the grip - in time, if not in place - of the “northern New England ‘bro’ culture” referred to by johnwesley. My comments about many Wesleyan students appearing out of mainstream were made in the context of the student populations I observed at these three schools, not solely on the imagined Aryan youth camps in Amherst, Williamstown and Hanover. </p>

<p>As to the issue of quality, quality is a bit like pornography - you know it when you see it. I didn’t see it at Wesleyan; it was evident in myriad ways at the other schools. Like in the old Sesame Street game with Big Bird, “one of these things is not like the others”, Wesleyan stood out as different. Perhaps, I was wrong in choosing to compare Wesleyan with the schools I did – a better set of schools would have been Brown, Vassar and Oberlin, all very good schools</p>

<p>As to the argument made by johnwesley that Wesleyan invests in programs, other schools in frivilous buildings. That is bunk and it smacks of sour grapes. </p>

<p>As to issue of how Wesleyan has evolved over the last thirty years and now occupies the unique place it does in American higher education, we should perhaps leave to historians. How Wesleyan diverged, the forces driving this divergence and whether the divergence is for the better or not will continue to be debated for some time.</p>

<p>BTW, someone from CC PMed me this note from Urban Legend: </p>

<p>Wesleyan is a prestigious university in Connecticut known for its activist student body and left-leaning political tenor. Often criticized for being precious and single-minded, it gets most of its attention in the New York Times with articles relating to naked dorms and demonstrations. In recent times the school has become known for its Hollywood connections and film student graduates. In general, the school’s reputation for protests, piercings and an active LBGT scene occludes its stature as a traditional and well-regarded northeastern university. </p>

<p>Indie Rocker 1: You read the new Dave Eggers book yet?
Indie Rocker 2: No, dude, I’ve been back at Wesleyan listening to my Ryan Adams albums.</p>

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<p>So what’s your point Hockeykid? You don’t like Wesleyan. Don’t apply. It is not for everyone. Just like Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth, etc. are not for everyone.<br>
I will say one thing - you sound like you think you would get into Wesleyan. There are no sure things. Actually from the sound of your posts, I would bet that your personality would come through in your essays and you would not get into Wes. Not because you are not intelligent, but because it is not a good fit.
Move on. Get off this page and focus on the schools that you like. No need to focus on what you don’t like.</p>

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<p>P.S. Hockeykid
I see your gpa, sats and ec’s on another post. Eh. Good thing you have the rowing. Which is not to diminish you as an applicant to HYP or Stanford where you really want to go. But with your resume, you would be a strong maybe to no without the rowing coaches recruiting you.
Seriously, best of luck to you and stop being so negative. It will come back to you.</p>

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<p>+1 to everything johnwesley said. for what it’s worth, I have some disagreements with the administration too and I don’t think the campus is quite as nice as Amherst or Yale’s either. doesn’t detract from anything I like about Wesleyan, namely, that the students are outside the mainstream, and that we’re not Williams. </p>

<p>to clarify TAs don’t teach classes, in any subject. TAs teach language workshops which are a mandatory but ungraded part of language classes. they’re an essential part of language classes and complement the rest of the class well: since they’re natural speakers and usually young enough to relate to students, they’re there to add, not to detract, from the class. this probably works similarly at a lot of schools.</p>

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<p>Hockeykid - I didn’t realize we were engaging in a debate, here. You asked a question (which I took to be a sincere one) and I answered it, to the best of my ability. If you think you have all the answers or would rather speak with a historian, that’s your privilege. But, why waste everyone’s time on this board?</p>

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<p>Then, don’t take my word for it. It isn’t Wesleyan that’s facing a possible downgrade in its debt because of questionable construction projects:
[MOODY’S</a> PLACES AMHERST COLLEGE’S (MA) Aaa AND Aaa/VMIG 1 RATINGS ON REVIEW FOR POSSIBLE DOWNGRADE - Rating Update - 2011/08/03 - Moody’s Global Credit Research - AlacraStore.com](<a href=“http://www.alacrastore.com/research/moodys-global-credit-research-MOODY_S_PLACES_AMHERST_COLLEGE_S_MA_Aaa_AND_Aaa_VMIG_1_RATINGS_ON_REVIEW_FOR_POSSIBLE_DOWNGRADE-RU_600035025_16966020]MOODY’S”>http://www.alacrastore.com/research/moodys-global-credit-research-MOODY_S_PLACES_AMHERST_COLLEGE_S_MA_Aaa_AND_Aaa_VMIG_1_RATINGS_ON_REVIEW_FOR_POSSIBLE_DOWNGRADE-RU_600035025_16966020)</p>

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<p>I apologize if my perspective is a bit different but I don’t see a problem here. Wesleyan may not be what it once was but that doesn’t mean it is better or worse. It may indeed be different. That is inherently neither good or bad. Yes, we felt many of the same things various posters have said here to argue that Wesleyan is going downhill. But for us, we saw many of these things as differentiators. Wesleyan was unique. It offered some things we didn’t find at any of the other colleges we visited. These things set Wesleyan apart in a positive way for us. Since my S has a strong interest in music, Wesleyan had a particular set of strengths that appealed to him. Conversely, Williams and Amherst seemed much more alike to us. It was more difficult to see each of them as unique. I guess we focused more on fit or match or interests than simply a ranking (although we certainly did use them in our search to initially identify some target school).</p>

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<p>I agree with englishjw, particularly about these personal choices not having to be assigned a positive or negative value. Wesleyan distinguished itself for my son because it offered opportunities and experiences that appealed to him. He visited Amherst for a day and a half
and then spent most of a Friday at Wesleyan and it was somewhere just before we hit the Tappan Zee Bridge late Friday afternoon that he told me that Amherst just wasn’t for him, that nothing stood out there from his perspective, and he’d rather not bother applying. Wesleyan, on the other hand, leapt toward the top of the pack on his list.</p>

<p>He didn’t need to justify his decision relative to anyone else or ask “What happened to Amherst?” His old man’s perspective on colleges certainly didn’t hold water with him, considering it was about 30 years outdated. And the rankings and pedigree game were even less influential than I was, since he went about his college search very selfishly. By that I mean that it was his decision to make because it was going to be his college experience. And I was confident he was making the right choices because he was making them unfettered from all of the other opinions and biases that only serve to cloud the process. (FWIW, he’s not attending Wesleyan and I’m not an alum and I won’t feel vicariously validated by whatever you ultimately decide.)</p>

<p>Frankly, I wish he had been underwhelmed by or disinterested in more colleges during his visits. So Hockeykid
count your blessings! Scratch Wesleyan off your list, and try to figure out, for yourself, which of the other colleges that you liked might be the kind of place that you want to spend the next four years at and then be an alumnus from from there on out. Welcome the chances you have to eliminate colleges from your list
but be sure you’re eliminating them selfishly, for your sake, and not to conform to some generalized, one-size-fits-all standard. If Wesleyan’s not for you – and it sounds like it’s not – then it’s not for you. It doesn’t have to be lesser than other colleges you’re considering in order for you to first eliminate it. Just eliminate it and move on.</p>

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<p>I agree fully with D’yer Maker - especially about his S not listening to his advice. I actually believe D’yer Maker, like me, recognized very early on that our Ss were well prepared to make their own decisions so we tried to keep our opinions to ourselves. </p>

<p>My S, wife and I made an early trip to U Penn. I was blown away by the layout of campus within the heart of the city. I couldn’t stop imaging what it would be like to attend U Penn for premed or their first class business school. The presentations from their admissions department were sensational - timely, quick, professional, and thorough. As all of this was going through my mind I looked over at my S. He had clearly decided that this was not a school he would have any interest in attending. He knew what he wanted and U Penn was not it. My hopes had been dashed! This was actually the moment that I realized my S was looking for a series of very well defined attributes in a school. He simply hadn’t gotten around to articulating what they were. He’ll be starting college in just over a week. He still is undecided about his major but we have confidence that he will figure that out too.</p>

<p>I think people tend to call what I am trying to describe as a match or fit. It doesn’t show up in the rankings or websites. Unfortunately, you probably have to visit a school to make your own judgments. If it doesn’t feel like a place you want to be, it isn’t.</p>

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<p>Hockeykid, if Wesleyan is what it used to be, a school similar in culture to the other schools you have expressed interest in, I definitely would not have applied, let alone through ED.</p>