Wesleyan University Top Questions

The town is small and most students stay close to campus or bail to NY for the weekends if they need a different venue. There are some bars and a really great art community in Middletown for those who want to get out. Basically, Wesleyan is as difficult or easy as you make your schedule. You can challenge yourself beyond beleif or float by, so if you're not fairly self-motivated you might find yourself drunk for four straight years. The students are amazingly independent and there is a lot of extra-curricular creative activity. Any sense of school pride I have comes from how impressed I am with my friends' ability to design and carry out a wide range of projects outside of school contexts. The administration is fairly removed from student life, and in my own experience organizing a student group, the administration doesn't really know where to find its own students.

Students are free to do whatever they want; there aren't many restrictions. They can experiment with course selection, extracurriculars, drugs, social groups, alcohol, etc., and it's pretty much expected, even encouraged. And the good thing is that the students are smart and responsible enough to handle the freedom.

The best thing about Wesleyan in my opinion is the amount of new people you will meet. Of course at any school you will meet new people, but I feel like at Wes you'll meet different types of people that you wouldn't have met anywhere else.

Wes is the perfect size - if you like familiarity. After four years at Wes, you'll know at least 50{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of your class, even if you like to keep just a few close friends. But most of the people you'll meet will be interesting and lead multifaceted lives. It's difficult to pin any Wes student to one category. It's a small but beautiful campus. Housing is shit your sophomore and junior years, but it's worth the tribulation if you find yourself in a senior woodframe or fauver apartment in your last year. Foss hill is maybe the greatest part of Wes. You'll hear every single Wes student mention it fondly. It's in the center of campus, and is best described as a great slope of grass, which looks onto Andrus baseball field. It's the site of WesFest, Spring Fling concerts, student concerts, and everyday lounging. On the first warm days of spring, it is packed full of kids playing catch, reading, singing, smoking, and kicking it. It is too glorious to describe: you'll have to see it yourself to get it. In the past decade, Wes campus has been completely overhauled. Since 1998, Freeman Athletic Center has been constructed (a gorgeous complex complete with a new, huge weight room, basketball gym, new locker rooms, and 10 squash courts...which are awesome), a turf field has been laid down for the field hockey and lacrosse teams, a new softball field has been constructed, the new Usdan Campus Center has been built, two new dorms (Freshman and Senior Fauver) have been constructed, and construction on a new science center is planned for 2010. The facilities are incredible, although many students miss the old Campus Center, and the old dining hall Mocon, which were both torn down last year upon Usdan's arrival. Wesleyan's relationship with Middletown is a tenuous one. Middletown is a very diverse community of mostly blue-collar residents. Main street is just blocks from the center of campus, and offers a quirky array of shops and restaurants. The food is decent, and there are a few bars. If you know where to look, there is a lot of fun stuff to do in Middletown. But most students don't look. Most students stay completely detached from Middletown. It is this detachment which causes some of the resentment of the local community. Still, there are plenty of students who engage regularly with the community. It is difficult to get to and from Middletown without a car - to get to New York or Boston, you'd need a ride to either the New Haven train station (about a 30 minute ride), or Hartford bus terminal (about a 20 minute ride). Wes administration is mostly receptive to student needs and requests. At least, that's the reputation the administration likes to exude. With regard to some academic departments, the administration has done a very poor job meeting needs. Last year, Wes alum Michael Roth as chosen to become the new President of Wes. He has done an excellent job raising funds for the school, and has made some good choices, especially the choice to exempt students from low-income households from paying tuition. He also responded well to recent confrontations between Middletown Police and Wesleyan students, in an incident known now as the Wesleyan Riots. At around 3am during the standoff, some Wes students went to Roth's on-campus residence, and explained to him the situation. Roth came down to the scene, and issued a statement which asked both students and police to be more reasonable. That is the nature of the relationship between students and administration at Wes - lines of communication are open, and many students form incredible relationships with staff.

Wesleyan, in a word, is AMAZING. Applying to schools, I applied to Wes on a whim. I had no intention of attending, nor did I have any idea what the place was like. I had never even stepped foot on campus. Looking back, deciding to come to Wes was the best decision I ever made. While the small size does lead to almost everybody knowing your business, that is a small price to pay for the intense feeling of a true community and sense of belonging. I love that I can walk across campus and recognize most of the people, whether or not I know their names. Most of my time on campus is spent, well, everywhere! I couldn't pinpoint one place I can almost always be found, though I will say that Olin Library is a popular spot, especially early on weeknights and alllll day on Sundays. As for Middletown, well, you get what you give. Many feel as though the area surrounding school is a bit shady, and I won't lie, it can be a bit dangerous. But if you have a head on your shoulders, it's really fine. Spend some time volunteering in the community, and you will see that these are some of the nicest people, and sadly, many have been dealt an unlucky hand. That being said, there are a lot of really good restaurants on Main Street, and one night a week, almost everybody on campus flocks down to the bars, where Wes kids are welcomed with open arms. The biggest recent controversy on campus was probably the "riot" at the end of the year. A completely non-violent party ended in disarray and violence when Middletown Police and CT state troopers arrived on the scene and displayed what some students have called "excessive force". Being a Wes student, I have to agree. Check it out on the news if you really are interested. It was all over the CT and New England news channels. School pride? YES! The first thing the freshman class did together was learn the fight song on the first night of orientation, and I have yet to forget it. It helps that the fight song plays over campus by the bells pretty frequently. GO WES!

Perfect size, amazing professors, amazing student body. A good place to go if you actually want to question the fabric of society, self, reality and everything else. A bad place if you want to ra-ra the football team.

I love the school. great, small and interesting classes. i wish it were a little bigger, but you can know a lot of people and everyone is friendly. the administration needs to get in touch with the students mindsets more. no one goes to football games.

Wesleyan educates just over 2800 undergraduates. While this size is perfect for a student entering college, who wants to find a small and welcoming community. by the end of a student's tenure it can start to feel small. While the campus has relatively easy access to both New York and Boston, this feeling is accentuated by the fact that Middletown is not a particularly exciting place outside of campus.

When I tell people I go to Wesleyan, they say, "Oh, in Illinois?" Or "What's it like going to an all girls school." The most frustrating though is when I say I go to Wesleyan, and they're like "Oh, Wellsleyan... I heard that's a great school." The new food provider was definitely one of the biggest controversies in 2007-2008. Bon Appetite just replaced Aramark, and the food plan is constantly changing-- often for the worse. Freshmen and Sophomores are required to have a minimum of five meals a week which can only be spent at either the campus center or Summerfields. But if you're on a sports team for instance, you usually get out of practice late and they stop food production at five, so you're stuck with the leftover scraps. Also, if you don't use up all five meals in a week, they don't roll over or anything. They just disappear!! Where do all the meals go? Nobody knows! It's really frustrating because when I get out of swim, sometimes I just want to pick up a frozen dinner and go eat in my room, or on the weekends I want to go out with my friends to a restaurant, but I am restrained to the cafeteria because of the meal plan.

People always think there is a naked dorm; there is not. Nobody really knows where Wesleyan is, or they confuse it with Wellesley or Ohio Wesleyan. I spend most of my time either in my dorm sleep, gym lifting, or library studying. I think the new Roth administration has been doing a pretty good job of gauging the needs and interests of the student body. Middletown is okay, not much of a college town, but just a regular old town. Not much school pride, Wesleyan just isn't very good at sports in general.

No matter what they say or how much they emphasize the word "University," Wesleyan is a liberal arts college with all of the perks and challenges of a typical liberal arts college. The good news is that Wesleyan is not nearly as small as some of its peer institutions. With a large student body comes more opportunites, a wider range of interests, and a larger social circle. However, this larger student body is well contained on Wesleyan's relatively small campus, which helps to create a wonderful sense of community. The student body is the heart of this school, and is what allowed me to feel at home at Wesleyan within only a few weeks of arriving. Wesleyan is not for the lazy or faint of heart. If you want to get involved, it is easy to do, but you alone have the power to do so. Once your in, its your responsiblity not to take on too much. Extracurriculars drive every student, and it sometimes seems as if the hours of 4-9 are the most exciting at Wes. One downfall of Wesleyan is its location. Middletown is nothing special. It has some decent food, and anything a student might need, but nothing more. Furthermore, a recent episode with the local police has raised awareness of our delicate relationship with the town, especially with its police force.

I'm a transfer student from a much larger, public institution and to me it seems as though Wesleyan's size is very well suited to fostering and enabling community. It's not big enough for you to feel insignificant or lost and it's not so small that you get tired of the student body. Wesleyan does live up to it's reputation for weirdness, but it's an endearing weird and one that you'll find you miss when you go home.

A lot of people complain about wesleyan while they are there and then complain about not being at wesleyan when they are not there. basically, i think the student body is quite cynical and just wants to complain. It's a very small school, but this has its pros as well as it's cons: smaller classes, you get to know people easily, attention from professors, all good things... but sometimes the ways in which everybody knows your business can start to feel like high school. its kind of hard to hide. Nobody has heard of wesleyan. The president's son is kind of cute. (He goes to Trinity, but looks like a wesleyan student, weird.) You never have to buy your own alcohol if you dont want to. everybody i know does drugs of several sorts. work hard, play hard... but its easy to pull decent grades without THAT much work. olin library is my second home.

The best thing about Wesleyan is the community; the people your surrounding yourself with. If I could change one thing I would give the student community more clout with the administration. There always seems to be a struggle because both are so strong-minded. The school is small- only around 2700 undergraduates, but that turned out to be the perfect size for me. People who have heard of Wesleyan are always impressed. But at the same time it isn't known by everyone, so occasionally coming across someone who thinks you go to an all-girls school outside boston provides for good exercises in humility. Middletown is good for what it is, and gives you good options for food and stuff, but in reality your gonna spend most of your party time on campus going to house parties, dance parties, and frat parties. For me this was great, especially since the greek community is open to everybody, as is everywhere else on campus. You can ngo out with no money and still get a good buzz going.

i think wesleyan is filled with many different types of people. i find that most people come into wes and find their niche somewhere. there are a lot of motivated, interesting, wonderful people at this school. almost everyone is passionate about something and willing to share their experiences and extend their services. wesleyan, while definitely a "bubble" (people rarely leave campus to go to nyc/newhaven to go out), is a wonderful, experimental environment. students are entrusted to pursue experiences at their own will and i think thats the best and most important thing about the environment and administrative policies. i think a lot of people are molded by the school in one way or another. when they leave wesleyan, they realize the impact of their school, and i think that most times, they take pride in the people they have become. one thing i would not really expect is to be exposed to many different diverse culture unless you go out and pursue it. while there are a lot of different cultures contributing to the student body, i find it is diffcult to find their backgrounds mixing much.

After my first week at Wesleyan, I remember telling my family that I was so impressed by the amount of smart, interesting, friendly, incredible people I had met. After my first year, my classroom experience, social experience, and overall sentiment about Wesleyan remain completely positive. I think my liberal arts education will prove to be just, if not more, valuable than an Ivy League one. While small, the size of the student body is in no way stifling--I love being able to leave my dorm and always run into at least one person I know. There are always great events going on around campus, from visiting speakers and professional art exhibits to student-organized concerts and dance performances.

Wesleyan is small enough that most people on campus look at least vaguely familiar, but big enough that you're always meeting new people. I'd say you're more in danger of feeling claustrophobic than agoraphobic, if I had to pick. Middletown has some nice restaurants and the requisite drugstore, hardware store and ice cream parlor, but almost all student activity takes place on campus. There is some tension between town residents and students, but many students also volunteer their time tutoring at a nearby housing project and teaching after-school art classes. One of the fundamental tensions within the Wesleyan community concerns what many students see as an attempt by the administration to bring Wesleyan into the mainstream, to which students have responded with a campaign to "Keep Wesleyan Weird." While I agree that it is important to maintain Wesleyan's independent spirit, I also agree with our new president, Michael Roth, that defining that independent spirit as "weird" is unnecessarily oppositional. I don't agree with all of Roth's decisions, such as upholding the previous administration's ban on chalking messages on campus sidewalks, but I think his heart is in the right place and I look forward to seeing where the university goes under his leadership.

I've found Wesleyan to be the most interested student body I've ever seen. My freshman year the girl who lived next to me had just published a book, and downstairs a boy was writing the score for an independent film that was being released. That's just how it is. I feel like everyone has so much they are doing and are interested. Wes goes way beyond the classroom or the party, and I've found this to be more evident here than any other school.

Most people where I'm from haven't heard of Wesleyan, or if they have, they are thinking of the wrong one. It used to frustrate me, but now I've learned to like that aspect of Wesleyan because I think it speaks to who we are as a college: we're a great school, but we don't feel the need to show that off all the time. The school is the perfect size if you're looking for a small, but not too small liberal arts school (2800) because you'll see people you know everywhere around campus and people you've never seen before. As far as the "college town" goes, Middletown gets a bad rap in most college guide books, when in fact it's really not so bad. It doesn't cater to college students, but there are many good restaurants and coffee shops there that are only a 10 minute walk from campus. I go there about once a week when I get tired of the food (which by the way isn't so bad either though it being Wesleyan, students complain about it regularly). What I love about Wesleyan, however, is that people are smart and talented, but are not usually full of themselves. Though we can be a little too pc, with gender neutral bathrooms and pronouns, we are also able to poke fun at ourselves, rather than take ourselves too seriously like some other top schools.

For me, the best thing about Wesleyan is that it seems as if theres a place for everyone. The second best thing is that it really promotes spiritual life.