Wesleyan University Top Questions

I wish more people new what wesleyan was or where it is.

I think that the best aspect of Wesleyan are the students. With one word I would describe the student body as pasisonate. Wesleyan attracts students that are not only passionate about learning but about using that knowledge to make an impact on the world after college. I have never been in another envirnoment where there has been such a genuine desire to, in loss of other words, make the world a better place.

If you are going to go to a small liberal arts school, Wes is a good choice. Just try not to fall too deeply into the bubble. One of the biggest problems with Wes kids is that they lose perspective.

the campus is beautiful and i felt like at home. my friend from a big state university told me that there is a family-like atmosphere. i would describe wesleyan as family if i had to choose one word.

Well this is an all-encompassing catigory isn't it? Hardly a simple survey question, more like an application for admission. Anyhow, to put it really simply, Wesleyan is incredibly cool (if you don't believe me ask our president. Holla). It's a great place to go if you want to be challenged and engaged, are comfortable having your views and assumptions questioned, and if you are open to meeting new and interesting people. Wes is not too big and not too small, it's a liberal arts school with a baller science program, and it's got a real campus and a small town set up with out being in the middle of nowhere. But I'm a tour guide, so you would expect me to love wes, right? Things that are sometimes problematic: It's a little bit like summer camp in that you get to live in a hip little bubble and discuss race, class, and gender issues while drinking coffee in Victorian houses and then maybe go see your friend's experimental music performance without much regard for what is going on in the world around you or that no one else regularly tries to use the pronoun "ze." Sometimes students self-segregate along racial or cultural lines which makes it harder to meet certain people. Sometimes we get too caught up in the semantics of things and it prevents frank discussion from occuring because people are worried about offending their classmates or sounding somehow prejudiced.

wesleyan has a very diverse student body in almost every way -- racially, ethnically, religiously, socially -- but not politically. everyone has basically similar political ideas. the school is a little under 3000 students undergrad, making it a pretty big small school -- small enough that you start recognizing familiar faces, big enough that you dont know who they all belong to. Middletown is pretty shitty. Theres a strip of expensive restaurants and some basic stores for hardware etc, but otherwise its just an angry industrialized blue-collar town that doesnt really like the pampered liberal liberal arts kids who live uphill and reportedly have strange parties with strange drugs, have strange ideas about political activism and come from places that, for the most part, are strange, by Middletown standards. But not to worry! there qre so many things to do on campus and so many people to meet that you wont really care what middletown thinks. one thing that bothers me is students' apparent desire to be upset by anything that they can logically be upset about. don't get me wrong -- wes students are, for the most part, remarkably happy people that do a variety of wonderful, beautiful things for the sole sake of making themselves and people around them happy -- but they also like to protest things that dont need to be protested, and try to make even the most irrelevant problems into political issues. for example, the school introduced a new food provider this year. people agreed almost unanimously that the food was better than it had been in past years and was certainly above college food par, low as that standard may be. but people still complained tirelessly about the new food provider and its politics; they mistreat workers, the food is not local enough, etc. On the one hand, it was nice to see students trying to make a pretty good system better. but on the other hand, I would have rathered see them protesting unjust wars, unscrupulous governmantal economic decisions, genocide in africa, or any of the millions of issues that are more important than making a good college food system a little better.

hokay, so as far as I can tell, as long as you're not looking for an engineering or linguistics program, you should make out okay. If you want dance, film, language, or polisci, you may become a very happy person, at least until finals, where everybody goes a bit crazy. I don't know if it's size or something else, but the University is one notch below having enough happening. Some nights are just slow if you don't want to get drunk, which I don't. The campus lacks a real center, so meeting people can be tricky if your hall isn't close (says the mild introvert). However, once you do find people and know them, they're 99 percent wonderful.

There's a lot of tension, sadly, between Wes and the rest of Middletown because a lot of people from the town accuse students of being over-privileged white kids. Especially when a student drops a Sour Patch Kid on the ground. All hell broke loose.... But it's a fun town anyway. Certainly very easy to get a lot of food off campus, and frequently not much. Typhoon has great lunch specials, and It's Only Natural has the best sweet potato fries. As for the school itself, it's awesome. The professors are really laid-back, for the most part, and really cool. A good number of people, because it's easy to find your friends, but not hard to avoid someone if necessary. The new campus center's a huge disappointment, but maybe not so much to incoming students who didn't get comfortable to the old set-up. If you want food on campus, the S&C in Alpha Delt is the best food on campus, and Pi Cafe's a nice pick-me-up.

Wesleyan is truly a wonderful school for someone to be individual. If you're very radical, you will fit in at this school. But if being an outspoken liberal is not your thing, there is no need to worry. If you can defend your stance on an issue you will not be despised.

Wesleyan students, as a whole, are extremely engaged and affable people. Interesting people, interesting interests. The campus is contained as far as social life goes, but there is enough going on any given night that it is easy to stay entertained-- if you aren't working your ass off.