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.