<p>Thank you! that’s what I thought it was to begin with. I don’t want to apply to a school whose name I can’t pronounce correctly.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the OP has nailed Wes. His observations are in line with my experiences there over the years and those of several of my friends who are seniors there now. It’s a special place and very good of kind, but best for a certain ilk of student. It seems that those most happy there would also gravitate to Brown, Vassar, Oberlin and Macalester.</p>
<p>He kind of lost me when he implied that Brown wasn’t a member of the Ivy League. Let’s just say, you’ve done a better job of explaining what he <em>meant</em> than he did. 
And, I’d add, Columbia, Swarthmoore, Chicago, Berkeley, NYU, Bates, Occidental, and Skidmore to the list of schools that would appeal to the same “ilk”.</p>
<p>I guess I should add Dartmouth, too: [Druggiest</a> Colleges in U.S.: Colorado, Denison, Dartmouth, Kenyon, More - The Daily Beast](<a href=“Druggiest Colleges in U.S.: Colorado, Denison, Dartmouth, Kenyon, More”>Druggiest Colleges in U.S.: Colorado, Denison, Dartmouth, Kenyon, More) :D</p>
<p>When I saw what the OP wrote, I realized I was seeing the same old regurgitation of “hot LAC envy” that is so common when adherents of one school disparage their fiercest rival. As Wes alums we have been used to hearing this from Amherst and Williams, our age-old Little Three brethren (and “sistren”). Now we’re getting it from Dartmouth here, it seems. President Roth, you must be doing a bang up job!</p>
<p>I taught history at Wesleyan for over 25 years. I agree with many of the observations made by the young man who opened up this conversation. His points are backed up explicity by President Roth himself in Wesleyan 2020: A Framework for Planning.
<a href=“http://2020.blogs.wesleyan.edu/[/url]”>http://2020.blogs.wesleyan.edu/</a></p>
<p>“For decades, Wesleyan has been regarded as one of the top liberal arts institutions focused on undergraduate education. Over the last twenty years, the US News and World Report rankings have had an important impact on the public’s sense of “the best” colleges in America. Wesleyan’s ranking has generally slipped, from 6th in the late 1980s to 13th in 2009. These rankings reflect a more fundamental shift in Wesleyan’s capacity to compete with other schools for faculty, students, and public recognition. While Wesleyan was the wealthiest school in relation to the number of students in the late 1960s and early 1970s, today the university does not have the ability to sustain the levels of spending per student that one finds at some of our peer institutions. This has an immediate negative impact on the rankings. With endowment increasingly taken as a way of measuring educational strength, Wesleyan has seen its standing erode. Prestige plays an important role in student choice, and reclaiming Wesleyan’s status at the very top will be challenging.”</p>
<p>On a relative basis, Wes is simply not the school it once was from a competitive and prestige perspective. The OP made this point and it is unequivocably true.</p>
<p>I can also, from personal experience, state that his comments about the politization of the faculty are spot on. For a whole host of reasons, many specific to Wesleyan, the faculty veered significantly leftwards in the late 1970s and during the 1980s with administrative leadership unable to counter this shift. As a result, the quality of the faculty suffered and, the College, by default not by design, became attactive to a different segment of student. </p>
<p>As he pointed out, Wesleyan is a very fine college. However, it’s no longer comparable, from a competitive and prestige standpoint, with Amherst and Williams or their Ivy counterparts, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc. All of the belly-aching by those boosters on this thread won’t change that. If we are to take up President Roth’s challenge, we must start by facing the facts.</p>
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<p>Which twenty-five? If it was within the last twenty-five years, that would scarcely put you in a position to judge what Wesleyan was like in the seventies and eighties. OTOH, if in fact, you retired during the seventies and eighties, that would make you about ninety years old. So, which is it?</p>
<p>From someone who doesn’t and has never thought of attending Wesleyan, I think the school is still fine. However, it’s reputation has changed from earlier. Obviously, prestige and the like aren’t everything. But denying that its level of prestige is silly. Clearly, prestige matters some to Wesleyan though, or otherwise people wouldn’t have pride about the school, unlike some commuter school where everyone leaves after five. (Not saying they’re bad, but clearly they’re not the same as Wesleyan) But I suppose everyone is here is clearly fine with the decision Wesleyan has taken. Just my thoughts.</p>
<p>FYI Brown is an Ivy and also Wesleyan is a hipster school so that is the reason for the lack of “mainstream” students</p>
<p>I think it’s a little overreaching to call Wesleyan a hipster school, when almost 20% of the school is varsity athletes and apart from the people in WestCo and Eclectic, few would call themselves hipsters… yeah, there’s a solid contingent of them, but it doesn’t define the school.</p>
<p>Brown is also 6,000 undergrads, so it’s even more difficult for one “group” to define the image of the school. And don’t get me started on the “Ivy” label…</p>
<p>^^ I think CollegeScaresMe8 is alluding to the fact that the OP does not consider Brown one of the “Ivies”:
</p>
<p>In fact, in re-reading it, the language used by the OP and by Oldscarecrow are suspiciously similar.</p>
<p>I spent a thoroughly wonderful weekend in Middletown attending a senior piano recital of the son of a friend. The building we were in was beautiful, old and quaint. It was an incredible experience. It almost made me sad my S did not attend Wesleyan where he was admitted.</p>
<p>I say almost because he attended Williams.</p>
<p>I have to say that Williams is more than sports, liquor and keeping up with Amherst (or rather Amherst keeping up with us. Just kidding. Hope you readers have a sense of humor.)</p>
<p>I am not sure why my son preferred Williams but it turned out to be a perfect choice for him. His dorm was on the same street as the Clark Art Museum and he spent untold hours there, got a job there, and is now in an Art History Program. Williams seems to produce Art Historians the way Wes produces folks in the entertainment industry.</p>
<p>He went to school to study Classics and Music, so this was an unpredictable outcome that demonstrated that Williams was THE perfect place for him. Williams happens to have a very strong string program which turned out to be less important than we thought it would be.</p>
<p>It’s had for prospies to sort all this, but partisans for Wes, Amherst, and Williams are all equally passionate, as my daughter is about Barnard being convinced that NYC and feminism were vital to her development.</p>
<p>Having said that, I know of young women who have transferred from Wes to Barnard and vice versa.</p>
<p>I think all these schools can prepare kids for a productive life and provide an exciting meaningful four years. I really don’t think we can parse things further than that.</p>
<p>And horrors, I attended a SUNY university and was admitted to an Ivy League PhD program. Kids lucky enough to attend an outstanding LAC are enjoying a wonderful experience, whichever one it is.</p>
<p>johnwesley - FYI - I thought the very same thing</p>
<p>Whenever he was at Wes, OldScarecrow’s points are right on, even if Wes alums don’t want to hear it. Some of what he says has been said by the Wes administration for years when talking about the endowment. The fact is that Wesleyan’s endowment on a per student basis is near the bottom of the top 25 LACs. Compare to say Swarthmore–Wes has twice the number of students (approx 3000 vs 1500), Swart has 2.5 times the endowment (approx 1.5 billion vs. 600 million). The top LACs have endowments in the range of $1 million per student, Wes is at about $200,000. OldScarecrow’s point is that this financial disadvantage is a change from 25 years ago, when Wes was much closer in resources to what it views as its peer schools. There is a lag with rankings–so much of rankings is based on reputation. Over time, resources will tell. The concern is that Wesleyan (continues) to slip vs. other elite LACs because it just cannot match their resources. The issue here is not whether Wes is a great school, it is. The issue is how does it compare to other top schools that have substantially more financial resources.</p>
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<p>Oh, I agree. And, when I look at other top schools that supposedly have “substantially more financial resources” I see schools that </p>
<p>1) spend substantially less on undergraduate research - [Why</a> Science at Wes?, Sciences at Wesleyan - Wesleyan University](<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/sciences/why-science-at-wes.html]Why”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/sciences/why-science-at-wes.html)</p>
<p>2) substantially more on trying to get their campuses to function half as well as Wesleyan’s: [Site</a> upon completion of project](<a href=“Stetson-Sawyer Building Project, Williams College”>Stetson-Sawyer Building Project, Williams College) </p>
<p>3) and bad food:<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/amherst-college/1293019-beware-amherst.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/amherst-college/1293019-beware-amherst.html</a>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/1330508-food-swarthmore.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/1330508-food-swarthmore.html</a></p>
<p>@johnwesley: I think that approach is quite weak.
- The sciences as Wesleyan are not inherently superior due to a copious amount of published work by the faculty.
9 out of 10 students matriculating into medical schools is not impressive at all.The stats on the page also include the “prestigious” medical schools that students at Wesleyan end up going to without stating the number that actually get into good schools. For the schools it does list, there are institutions like Dartmouth Medical, while notably lacking Johns Hopkins. Harvard Medical is listed, but how many applicants actually got in? It could be one for all we know (probably). </p>
<p>2) Really…?</p>
<ol>
<li>Seriously…?</li>
</ol>
<p>Wesleyan is a fantastic institution, but it should not be considered on par with the likes of Williams, Middlebury, Swarthmore, or Amherst.</p>
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<p>That sounds remarkably like sour grapes.</p>
<p>Actually, Wesleyan was one of my safety schools and I was accepted.
I think it’s great that you love your school. Derision was not my objective.</p>
<p>^^Then, please explain the obvious inferiority complex you have regarding Wesleyan?</p>
<p>@Dcsmiss A safety school!? Wasn’t that a little ridiculous to assume you’d get accepted? It’s one thing to say Wesleyan is ‘not on par’ with some of the other top schools, but to consider it a safety school!? </p>
<p>I love Wesleyan regardless of its prestige, and I would gladly choose it over many of the other top schools I’m applying to next year… </p>
<p>Now, here’s to hoping I actually get accepted. =p</p>