Williams vs Wellesley vs UC Berkeley Dual Degree

College Search & Selection
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Hello! I am a high school senior and was recently admitted to these three schools. I was having some issues selecting which one to attend and was wondering if I could get some advice, especially from alumni. What was your experience like? Would you recommend it?

Context

  • From San Francisco Bay Area
  • Majoring in Political Science
  • I want to attend graduate school for public policy
  • Receiving financial aid from all schools

PROS/CONS of Williams
Pros:

  • 33k per year (132k total)
  • #1 liberal arts college in U.S.
  • Open curriculum
  • Small student population
  • Seems to really care about its students, especially regarding financial matters
  • Textbooks paid for + given stipend during the summer to do research/internships
  • Invited to FREE Social Science Summer program for minority/first-gen students

Cons:

  • Middle of nowhere, not near a major city
  • Seems to be more STEM-oriented
  • Less name recognition
  • I feel like I don’t know enough about the school

PROS/CONS of Wellesley
Pros:

  • historically women’s college
  • the first semester has no grades, making it easier to transition to college
  • near Boston
  • BEAUTIFUL campus
  • Great alumni network
  • Can take classes at MIT
  • Wellesley in DC program
  • Great location, in my opinion

Cons:

  • 40k per year (160k total - most expensive option)
  • I have heard many negative things about Wellesley from current students
  • Great deflation
  • Said to be isolating & there are lots of cliques

PROS/CONS of UC Berkeley Dual Degree
Pros:

  • Will attend dual degree program with Sciences Po (#1 School in France for Politics). Will spend the first two years in Reims, France & last two in Berkeley. Will receive two bachelor’s degrees.
  • I will get the best of both world: large size of Berkeley + small size of Sciences Po
  • Can get own apartment
  • I get priority class registration and housing at Berkeley
  • Automatic admittance to Sciences Po’s graduate programs (in Public Policy)
  • Cheapest option (120k in total)
  • Can major in Politics @ Sciences Po and another major @ Berkeley
  • Very prestigious/name recognition is good
  • Required to do an internship summer going into Sophomore year

Cons:

  • Language barrier if I live in France
  • French education system is very different and DIFFICULT
  • I have to take 7-8 classes per semester
  • Have to come back to Bay Area (close to family)
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The Wellesley network is UNREAL. I know you already mentioned that but I think it is hard for HS students to fully grasp how amazing it is. Also - have you considered asking the FA office to match your other offers?

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FWIW I absolutely loved Wellesley and I have continued to interact with recent grads through on campus recruiting. I even have a recent grad living in my house right now. The Wellesley loyalty is strong and the love of Wellesley is high.

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My two cents. If you’re serious about politics/policy as a career path, Wellesley is probably best. If being in a city/cities is a high priority, then Berkeley/Po (Wellesley is suburban). But if a bucolic and isolated campus is not a problem, I’d advise Williams (from the title of your thread, before knowing anything about you, that would have been my recommendation, but after reading your nice summary I’m less sure). Congratulations on having amazing options!

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At least where I live (in the northeast of the US) Williams College is well known and well respected. In terms of reputation at least around here it is as strong as your other two options (which are very strong). I am confident that graduate programs in the USA will know about it and will respect it. It is in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts and is in a small town. It is 17 miles from Bennington College but that does not put it near very much. It is more than an hour from Amherst. There are plenty of outdoors activities in the area and it is a very pretty area.

For the UC Berkeley option, what would the dual degrees be (or perhaps what would the second degree be)? Do you speak any French?

I do see some benefits with your Wellesley choice. It has been a long time since I took a couple of classes there while I was an MIT student. I do agree about the cliques, but this just means that you hang out with people who are “like you” and do not worry about the rest of them. At least when I was there you could take a shuttle bus between MIT and Wellesley, and there was a different shuttle between Harvard and Wellesley. This made it easy to get into Cambridge for social activities as well as for classes. There is a lot of social life in Cambridge, particularly around Harvard Square as well as in Boston.

I wondered about this also.

All of these sound like very good options to me, particularly if you can afford them without taking on debt.

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All really good options. I’d go with the UCB/Po option. Will force you outside your comfort zone and also expose you to lots of people who will think very differently. IF you can learn the language, I think this option will give you the best shot at global politics.

If you want to work in DC or in US politics then I’d say Williams next. They have an amazing network and connections. Yes, it is in the middle of nowhere. The academic rigor is amazing though it does lean more to the STEM and particular humanities subjects ( art history, for example). You could see how it’s rated across various info sites in politics.

Lastly, and still an excellent option is Wellesley. I think Wellesley is a great school but has two things IMO going against it, single sex education and the location outside Boston which is not a nexus for politics in the US. Their academic rigor is going to be great but I don’t think you will do as well. One thing I’d tell someone to consider, the people who attended 30-50 years ago had few to no options at the schools which are available now. So if you say HC or anyone else went there and therefore that makes it a path to politics, you also have to consider than fewer women attend single sex colleges. Women who go there, do love it.

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As an opinion, Williams matches best for students who express a decisive preference for attending college in a remote setting. Nonetheless, the capital of New York State can be reached from Williamstown within an hour by car.

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Williams. If you can afford the $12k cost over Cal for the four years, I believe it’s your best option.

You’re incorrect about name recognition. People know Williams. Especially people who matter. It’s more prestigious than Cal, IMO.

You seem to dislike the culture at Wellesley, so I think Williams is a better option. The fact that you applied to two LACs and are seriously considering both leads me to believe that an LAC is desirable to you. You aren’t going to get that at Cal, with its huge, impersonal classes.

Study abroad in France is an option you can consider if you really want that experience. There is little name recognition for Sciences Po in the US and I think the intensity of that part of the program is not ideal.

As for location, Williams will offer plenty to keep students happy. There is a good reason it has the same retention rate as the other schools you’re considering. The reality is that students spend a lot of time on campus when that’s where their friends, food, and beds are.

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Just some practical advice - don’t forget about cost of travel to/from each location a few times a year and costs associated with living in each area. I am not sure if you have put that into your calculations. Bay area, Paris and Boston all will involve more spending money to go out and about vs Williams. If you are on a tight spending budget, you could feel “left out” of activities vs Williams where the action is on campus with many sponsored events.

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No, she’s correct about name recognition.

I went to three Ivies, including the one down Route 2 from Williams, and I never heard of Williams as a thing until my kids went thru the college search process. It was just another Vassar or Colgate or Macalester. If you ask 100 Americans to name the top 5 small liberal arts college in the US, 95 won’t be able to name 1 of them. Would that matter for grad school? Absolutely not. Academics certainly know Williams. Would it matter if you wanted to be a junior staffer for your local California congressperson? Maybe. For getting a job on Main Street USA? Yeah, it probably would. So I guess it depends on who the “people who matter” end up being. Regardless, Williams doesn’t have the same name recognition as Wellesley in the northeast, and it has nowhere near the name recognition of Cal Berkeley.

One thing about the Berkeley dual degree you didn’t mention is whether you view 2 years at each location as a pro or con. For some, that split might be a positive. But you are definitely going to form very different social bonds and experience your college years quite differently by splitting the time up like that. It may or may not matter, but it’s something I’d consider.

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Do you know any French? Do you know a romance language (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian) or Latin? Have you lived on your own before, or largely independently, or done boarding school? Do you have any recent experience living in a foreign country? If the answer is no to all of these, then I would not recommend the Berkeley/Sciences Po program.

Moving away from home is a big transition for almost everyone. Adjusting to college coursework is a big transition for most people. Creating a new social circle is also a big transition. Those are all going to be hard enough in a language in which you are fluent and in an academic style that will generally be familiar. Trying to do all of those things in a country where you don’t speak the language and the educational system is very different is going to be an even bigger challenge.

If you are still really interested in the Sciences Po program, find out from Cal how the grades transfer. If it’s like a typical French university, they grade on a 20-point scale. 20 is for God, 19 for the professor, and 18 for the best student in the class, maybe. If Berkeley is doing straight conversions (i.e. 18/20 is 90%) then your college GPA could really be in shambles. Most American universities doing exchange programs have a more generous conversion rate (I think 14/20 converted to an “A” back in the day for my college).

As far as the W colleges, I don’t have a strong sense pushing towards one or the other in terms of academics. But just from what you’ve said here, I have a strong inclination towards Williams for you. Why?

The summer program is going to help you become familiar with the campus, campus life, professors, help meet friends and build your social circle, etc. That way, when regular classes start, you’re already a couple steps ahead of the game. And they’re giving you stipends for summer research/internships. Oftentimes some of the best internships in terms of experience are unpaid. Getting a stipend is golden. Free textbooks is also worth thousands of dollars over the course of your college career. One less thing to worry about or pay for.

Frankly, it sounds as though Williams is doing everything possible to set you up for success AT Williams and BEYOND Williams. Thus, based on what you’ve said, I’d be going there. Williams is one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country and has an excellent reputation with grad schools, employers, and politicians. It will in no way, shape, or form hold you back.

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Wouldn’t most colleges just consider transfer courses as passed or not passed in terms of calculating GPA for their own purposes?

Of course, if the student later applies to graduate or professional school, the conversion of French university grades for the purpose of such applications can matter for that purpose.

In terms of the French language, the Sciences Po part of the program requires French language course work, unless the student already knows French to the (CEFRL) B2 level or higher (in which case the student can choose another language to study): https://sciencespo.berkeley.edu/academics/sciencespo

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In my experience, when a college has a direct relationship with a different university, the course titles and grades transfer over. So my college transcript shows the grades for the year I spent in France at the French universities. And @fiftyfifty1 has mentioned the National Student Exchange several times where students might end up taking courses in Canada or the Caribbean, and I believe those courses/titles transfer just as if they were taken at your home institution. (Please correct me if I’m wrong!) But if someone is enrolling at a different program (with different tuition rates, etc) from their regular university for a year abroad, then perhaps those classes are just marked as pass/fail.

I understand that this Sciences Po classes for this program are in English. But if OP needs to ask where a building is, or figuring out how to make an international call, or wants to order some food without needing to see a picture of it, or take clothes to the dry cleaner or heck, find out how to say dry cleaner and figure out where it might be, or telling the worker at the market how much food she wants, or figuring out how the health screening personnel want you to move, etc. All of that will be in a foreign language. And even though a number of French people speak English, they really don’t like it when people (especially Americans) just start talking to them in English rather than making good-faith efforts to communicate in French.

And speaking of the French, once they warm up to you, they will count you among their lifelong friends. But Americans have a higher level of general friendliness and a much faster timeline for becoming friends (i.e., even for inviting someone to join a group after class). (Of course, many American friendships tend to be much more superficial than those that the French forge.) The people in my program found that it took about 4-5 months for the process to really start happening. And for some people, it never did happen. So imagine leaving home for the first time, trying to figure everything out, not speaking the language well, and you’re lucky if you get more than the most superficial of conversations with a local for months on end.

I can’t tell how many people participate in the Sciences Po program, but I would anticipate that would form the basis for building a social network for OP. There might be 100, 200, 500? Will OP find her kind of people in that group? Maybe. And how many of them will be part of UC-Berkeley and that she will still be in close proximity to after the first two years? Or will she have to restart from scratch again her junior year?

All in all, I just think it’s a really hard way to start college. I think that studying abroad, studying in France, etc, are all wonderful things. I just wouldn’t recommend starting off that way.

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“Grade deflation” at Wellesley - which was actually more of a forced curve and not literally grade deflation - was removed as a policy…4 years ago I believe? So I am not sure why you are still hearing about it? My first year is having a wonderful experience there. Definitely no grade issues and has made so many wonderful friends.

She was so thrilled to meet like minded friends and did immediately bond with them and their dorm community - but she says all the groups of friends overlap and are inclusive. Hard to say, I imagine every school has cliques if that is another way of saying friend groups?

I am sorry you have heard so many negative things. My daughter and her friends’ experiences are very positive. I think when it fits is really fits and when it doesn’t, it really doesn’t. That is why it is good you are doing such thorough research.

Congratulations on your great acceptances!

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@2022jl Parent of a Williams grad here. I wouldn’t consider Williamstown “the middle of nowhere.” The Berkshires are actually a sophisticated playground for New Yorkers and Bostonians with plenty of snow sports in the winter and arts activities in the summer. (See the Clark and MassMoCA museums, Williamstown theater festival, Tanglewood music, Jacob’s Pillow dance.)

Have you visited Williams? If you have and didn’t react positively to its mountain village setting, then I’d not pursue it further. My observation is that those that are happiest at Williams are those that choose it BECAUSE OF its rural setting, not IN SPITE of it. If you haven’t visited, try to do so before making a final decision. My son loved Williams insular environment, the natural beauty and availability of outdoorsy activities. Williams kids do manage to get to Boston or New York once or twice a term and many study abroad junior year and travel during Winter Study. But for sure, its location is not for everyone.

Some comments on your pros/cons:
Williams doesn’t have an open curriculum. It has distribution requirements (as does Wellesley) meaning students need to take a few classes from different academic categories.

Williams really, really cares about its students. To me, the close relationship with Williams professors is the gift that keeps on giving. They’re accessible while you’re there and for a long time afterwards in the form of job and graduate school recommendations.

Williams does have very good math and sciences, but it also has very strong humanities and social sciences. Political Science is one of the largest departments with connections to Political Economy, Economics, Global Studies and Williams Center for Development Economics.

Name recognition is variable. Certainly graduate and professional school adcoms know and respect Williams as do prominent NGOs and think tanks. Your relatives and neighbors may not have ever heard of it.

Some other Williams pros are Winter Study (as mentioned above, a month of relaxed learning and socializing or travel) and Oxford-style Tutorials (two students and one professor).

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The Summer is spectacular in the Berkshires with lots to do ( It’s a culture fest). The Winter not so much, apart from some local skiing, and beautiful nature walks. A lot closes in the Winter esp restaurants and even some local stores.
Kids should definitely visit any college if they can. This isn’t always possible. I honestly love Williams and my oldest liked it a lot. But I think you have to be careful saying there’s lot to do. There’s isn’t a lot from Nov-May. There is a lot to do on campus. It’s kind of a world within itself. Good for some, but for many it can be very isolating. We lived in the Berkshires for a couple of years and kept a house elsewhere as well. The winters are long, cold and beautiful. The sleepiness was conducive to writing or studying but hard for young people.

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So . . . Sciences Po has the language barrier, which seems like a really big negative. Williams is isolated out in the middle of nowhere. That leaves Wellesley with one of the best alumnae networks of any college in the country, a beautiful campus in a charming town, and easy access into & out of either Boston or Harvard Square. Not only can you cross register at MIT but you can also cross register at Babson right in the same town as Wellesley, one of the best and most interesting business colleges in the country with a unique approach to learning. As a bonus, Boston is relatively easy to fly in and out of from California whereas Williams is more challenging. You choose.

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lol, citation needed

Some of the stuff you see on this web site sometimes, my goodness.

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Agree. I live in the Northeast and Williams is quite well known. So are the other schools but Williams would have the strongest name recognition in New England esp among recruiters. In some fields, it’s one of the top schools. Bar none.

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Imagine lacking the self awareness to know that people who frequent College Confidential and those in their social and professional circles do not actually represent the average American, nor do the circles of elite college recruiters represent anything except the 1%. Berkeley is in the news and popular culture. It’s known among people with hobbies that extend beyond college rankings. Williams isn’t in the news and popular culture. This isn’t that hard. One clearly has greater name recognition.

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