Academics: Smith vs. Mt. Holyoke vs. Wellesley?

welles10
Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:23:52 +0000

I think you would do really well at Wellesley. Wellesley’s more popular majors include English and Political Science (we do not have a Government department) and all of our languages are very strong, especially French which has many opportunities for students to go abroad, including Wellesley-in-Aix, which has been mentioned in another thread.

Professors are all very accessible and often give out their cell phone and/or home phone numbers in case students need help, besides office hours and contacting through email and class time. I don’t think you can really say anything bad about professors at Wellesley; they are at the school to teach and to give their students more knowledge about the subjects they teach. Many professors hold extra study sessions before exams and some professors even hold office hours on the weekends to accommodate for everyone’s schedules! I really like the personal attention in all of my classes – my professors don’t only know me as a student in their class, they know what activities I’m involved with on and off campus, what other classes I am taking, etc. Some professors really become almost like friends of yours, especially if you end up taking more than one class with them. I think practically every semester I have been at Wellesley I have had at least one professor invite the class to their home for dinner or something like that. It’s really special and I don’t think I would have gotten that kind of attention if I had chosen to attend another school.

And yes, Wellesley has a multitude of research programs available. I do not know anything about the Kahn Institute at Smith so I cannot say anything about that. You can choose to do research with a faculty member if you wish; some people stay on for their entire times at Wellesley while others do a semester here and there - it’s up to you what you choose to do in college.

I think overall, and this is probably a very biased opinion, but I would say that the general feeling for academics between these three schools would be Wellesley then Smith then MHC with Wellesley being the best of the three. Granted, I never considered MHC when I was looking at colleges nor have I ever been there. Personally, my roommate from last year chose Wellesley over MHC when she was looking at schools, and I was accepted as a Smith STRIDE when I applied there. And by looking on these forums enough, I can say that you will get a good education no matter which of these schools you eventually attend so at least you have options for next year.