#1 Train Wreck School

Colleges & Universities Wesleyan University
61

<p>I wish that I had posted this sooner, but in the other topic “Ask a Current Student” we had answered a question that pertains to the misconception of having an entirely liberal student body and atmosphere at Wes (or as parent57 puts it, “a hospitable environment for students who don’t share the political views of the majority”). You can find that post here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13103233-post45.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13103233-post45.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

<p>As a current Wes student, I feel that we have a completely open, respectful, and tolerant community. I am sorry to see that anyone could label us a “Train Wreck” (with the caption “Do Not Enter”), but everyone is entitled to his or her opinion and the author deserves the right to express his. </p>

<p>I really do not have the desire to stir up more controversy, but Wesleyan is an amazingly progressive place and our curriculum is just one aspect of student life that reflects that fact. I guess the debate lies therein of whether or not that is such a bad thing. Personally, I love having the academic freedom of being able to take whatever class I want whenever I want to. I have found that everyone in my classes is taking that specific class because they want to and not because they have to, which produces the most engaging and fascinating discussions I have ever been a part of. And, by the way, Biology of Sex has been my favorite class I have ever taken!</p>

<p>If anyone would like to get an answer from a current student’s perspective on any questions on the link I have provided or anything else, I would be more than happy to answer them either publicly or privately.</p>

62

<p>Hey WesTalk, thank you for the excellent answer. I have been waiting for someone to answer this question, and unbeknownst to me you had addressed it in the other thread. If most of the students are like you (logical, temperate and thoughtful), I would think students of any political persuasion would be comfortable at Wesleyan.</p>

<p>Is there ideological diversity amongst the faculty? The ranking is asserting that many of the social science and history courses are overly politicized. I perused the course catalog and some of the course descriptions did lend some credence to their argument. What do you think? Given that you have this freedom to choose any of your courses, do most students voluntarily take courses in the typical core requirements one sees at other schools, like political science, economics, foreign language, math, science, literature/composition etc. Are the athletes on campus integrated socially into the wider student body or do they mainly stay to themselves.</p>

63

<p>

</p>

<p>Correction: you searched for the word, “gender” and _<em>voila</em> found courses that mentioned gender, sex, and sexuality. I suggest doing the same thing for the phrase “Federalist Papers” – you’ll find about three times the number of references to the Federalist Papers (including scholarly papers and course descriptions) on the Wesleyan search engine than you’ll find through the Claremont-McKenna search engine.</p>

64

<p>

</p>

<p>I would object to the use of the word “typical” here. If we’ve established anything it is that there is no “typical” approach here, and if anything, colleges - like Claremont-Mckenna - that require students to take core subjects – including Phys Ed – are the outliers.</p>

65

<p>JW, never used Wesleyan search engine, just looked at course descriptions in a variety of majors. Not going to get into a CMC/Wesleyan contest, two different schools that probably don’t appeal to the same student</p>

66

<p>^^What sort of student does CMC appeal to?</p>

67

<p>This website really angers me. It’s blatant hypocrisy to the worst level. They claim to rank colleges poorly based on their liberal bias and lack of debate. However, many colleges that they rank highly are equally politicized and stifling for dissent, only in the conservative direction.
For example, in its review praising Christendom College: "Instead of political correctness, there is an absolute expectation of Catholic orthodoxy; debates on campus are among Republicans, anticapitalist agrarians, libertarians, paleoconservatives, and monarchists. "</p>

<p>Furthermore, the website tries to pass itself off as a moderate, unbiased source that provides an “in-depth, independently researched college guide.” the parent organization, ISI, boldly claims to be “non-partisan.”</p>

<p>While I agree with some of the criticisms this website throws out, the deceptive manner in which it presents them is disgusting.</p>

68

<p>Hey parent57, those were all really great questions and I apologize in advance for how long this response is, but I felt they merited thorough descriptions. </p>

<p>I think that the most accurate phrase to describe all aspects of Wesleyan is “diversity in thought and interest.” While this sounds really clich</p>

69

<p>Thanks WesTalk. If the school was smart, they would recruit you for a position in their admissions office.</p>

70

<p>“What sort of student does CMC appeal to?”</p>

<p>JW, I am not sure this is the right forum to answer this question. Also, I don’t want to get you upset with my answer, but since you asked I will give you a brief answer.</p>

<p>I believe CMC is unique among the top liberal colleges in the USA. Like other great schools, a student applying to CMC has to have excelled in the classroom, but great SAT scores and GPA will not get a student into CMC. The school is looking for a particular kind of kid. It wants students who have assumed leadership roles in extracurricular, community or other socially relevant activities. They are looking for students who have made a significant impact in some activity outside the classroom. It could be they started a new organization or, through their leadership skills, took a organization and changed it in material way. Consequently, CMC students are highly social, achievement-oriented and type A doers. Also, many of the students have played on varsity teams and continue to play at CMC.</p>

<p>The school is particularly known for their economics, government and international relations departments. The school has a pre-professional focus, preparing students for careers in business, finance and govt. Consequently, the economics dept unlike other liberal arts institutions, has an economic-accounting major and a finance and entrepreneurial leadership sequence. Kids who graduate from these programs typically end up in investment banks, accounting firms and corporate finance departments of Fortune 500 companies. A significant percentage of the alumni are entrepreneurs, running large organizations, and have important positions in government. Many of the CMC graduates go to law school because of the strong focus in government, history and legal studies. I have also heard very good things about English, psychology, philosophy, and the religious studies depts. There is a Politics, Philosophy and Economics Major (PPE), a highly selective tutorial program patterned after the famous program at Oxford. Finally we have the Athenaeum, where accomplished speakers in business, govt and academics have dinner with students every night of the week.</p>

<p>It might help if you are truly interested in the type of student interested in CMC to hear the perspective of a CMC student:</p>

<p>“I did consider the overall entrepreneurial culture of a college campus. I want to be around kids who dream big and aren’t ashamed of to say it. I considered how passionately students took to the “life of the mind”. I talked to professors, studied their programs, and pondered their probable availability for one-on-one dinners and their ability to awaken a classroom. I considered the location and weather of the college. Having lived in San Francisco my whole life, I haven’t seen snow for more than a few days at a time. I like moderate-to-warm weather. Finally, I considered the college’s alumni network – its vibrancy and distribution of careers.”</p>

<p>“Unlike many elite liberal arts colleges which all blend together, CMC is distinctive. It has carved out a niche in higher education and, frankly, dominates it. Claremont is all about leadership, government, business, and public policy. The College embraces “life entrepreneurship” more than any other school I visited.”</p>

<p>Hope I answered your question. Sorry about not being brief.</p>

71

<p>

</p>

<p>And yet, Claremont-McKenna has to force them to take required courses in “core subjects” like Government, Economics, History, Math and Science (by your definition), plus Phys Ed. That doesn’t make sense. Why don’t they trust such “type-A doers” to make sound judgments about their own education?</p>

72

<p>Well, JW, I suppose we could debate the virtues of a core curriculum, but maybe it is best if I quote the explanation from the CMC catalog: </p>

<p>“The learning goals of a CMC education are to teach students transferable abilities including analytic skills, communication skills, and critical thinking skills, and to impart intellectual breadth and preparation for responsible leadership and citizenship through exposure to a variety of academic disciplines. Within the broader context of the College’s unique mission, each major discipline at CMC has set its own learning goals including substantial knowledge of the chosen field of study with identified student learning outcomes for assessment and evaluation.” </p>

<p>The goal is for a student to finished the general education requirements by the end of the sophomore year and to focus on their major(s) their last two years. I don’t know about Wesleyan, but CMC students also have to complete a senior thesis. As described in their catalog, the student must complete a serious piece of scholarship under the supervision of a faculty reader who teaches within that major. The senior thesis should serve as a capstone experience to a student’s undergraduate education.</p>

<p>Although these requirements may seem onerous, the students don’t seem to mind. In 2011, CMC was ranked #2 by Princeton Review among all colleges with the happiest students.</p>

73

<p>I’m sorry, I hate to extend a discussion that has clearly run out of it’s original steam, but I have a strong opinion about the question of conservative students feeling comfortable in college, any college. I think this is a serious question, and it goes to the heart of what college is for. It’s worrisome to me since I believe college is for questioning beliefs of every kind, for forming educated opinions, and growing into a broad but also personal and unique world view. If you agree with that, then you’ll agree that we can’t proscribe our kids’ college education, wherever and however it’s taking place. We as parents have some leeway in paying for & choosing a college, obviously, but once that decision is done, the faculty of that school are in charge. It’s called “academic freedom” and ought to be supported generally, and wholeheartedly by libertarians in particular. Any college/university worth its salt will do it’s best by students coming from any background. But faculty will teach what they believe - that’s really just the point, it’s what they do. So there are two options: Go to college, or don’t, get an education, or don’t. The choice is pretty simple. It’s very possible to get a degree with a closed mind, but it’s unfortunate, and a lot more difficult. Bottom-line, I very much doubt that, however much we may argue with our kids when they come home to visit, any student is being actually brainwashed in any particular school’s undergraduate curriculum.</p>

74

<p>^^Well put. And, all the more ironic that a school like Claremont-McKenna which, at least in its literature, extols the virtues of “freedom”, “democracy” and “entrepreneurship” should extend the least freedom to its own students to pick and choose their own courses while a school like Wesleyan which is supposedly SO leftwing should extend the most. </p>

<p>No doubt some people are “happier” having decisions made for them, and I don’t mean to disrespect them. But, I should think a conservative student would be happier at a college with less disconnect between its rhetoric and its actions.</p>

75

<p>I agree with much of what you said Momophony, but this academic freedom you refer to has effectively been denied to many speakers at college campuses by organized groups of students who have prevented these speakers from speaking by shouting them down. The speakers have ranged from Gov. Scott Walker, David Horowitz, Karl Rove, Star Parker, the Israeli Ambassador, John Yoo and many others. UCI Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, an ardent defender of free speech rights and academic freedom, has argued, the actions of the students constituted a “heckler’s veto” and therefore crossed the line between acceptable and prohibited protest. Unfortunately, academic freedom is not always practiced as it should be at various colleges around the country.</p>

76

<p>JW, just to correct an impression of yours, the CMC student body is hardly conservative. Politically, it is much more diverse than you think. There may be more liberals than conservatives there. Both groups are well represented.</p>

77

<p>^^I never said, the students at Claremont McKenna were conservative; I said the college’s policies seemed a little hide-bound.</p>

78

<p>Parent 57 Not only are the athletes integrated with the student body as a whole, but with the entire community as a whole. Check out the Wesleyan athletics page on Facebook, or even the wesleyan football page and you will see involvement in many local community activities, from tutoring and supporting local elementary schools, and hosting events like recess at Wes, to shoveling snow off walks for senior citizens in middletown, Wes athletes do a lot. And these activities are not only open to athletes, but once a group gets involved, the offer then spreads to other Wes students and teams. Athletes at Wes don’t have special class sections like some other schools, so they pick classes like everyone else, so there is a great variety of athletes and non athletes alike in most classes, also a variety of frown/soph/junior/senior in classes too. </p>

<p>As far as the original thread goes… I couldn’t be happier my son is at this “train wreck” school. If only everyone could. Wes has been great, perfect, no, but definitely great and my son couldn’t wait to get back…</p>