Wesleyan University Top Questions

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.