<p>One of my friends who will be enrolling at Wes sent me a link to the 2012 group on Facebook. In the Amherst v. Wesleyan discussion thread, all the Weskids trashed Amherst. Me, I always try to remain reasonably objective.</p>
<p>Quick Question (from clueless parent): how is Michael Bay ruining Wesleyan?</p>
<p>I think mlevine07 was referring to middsmith. I’ve always found kwu’s posts reasonably objective.</p>
<p>jg0339 - it’s an old debater’s trick: damning with faint praise.</p>
<p>Yup, I meant middsmith.</p>
<p>Yeah, I know, I was just saying.</p>
<p>Michael Bay is ruining Wesleyan in the same way that Dan Brown is ruining Amherst.
Which is to say, not really.</p>
<p>“Quick Question (from clueless parent): how is Michael Bay ruining Wesleyan?”</p>
<p>He’s not. It’s just that he sucks and Wesleyan doesn’t. See what I’m getting at?</p>
<p>OTOH, despite the badness of his movies, Michael Bay does make a lot of money, some of which he gives to Wes, so it’s hard to complain too much (esp. as a film major , which is where he donates his money :P). </p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t know why this thread devolved into a LAC vs. LAC catfight. I think something that can be drawn from it, though, is that different LACs attract different kinds of people — for instance, as someone who wanted a hippy-quirky school with a strong film program, Wes was a clear first choice LAC for me, with Vassar, Oberlin and Carleton as other tops; for someone with different criteria (in fit or academics), maybe the choice is Williams, or Middlebury, or Claremont McKenna, or Swarthmore, or Barnard. As others have said, fit matters to a greater extent at LACs than at bigger schools, and being able to articulate why you fit at/love a particular school and show that through your essay(s) is definitely helpful, and is the kind of thing that can give you an edge in admissions, esp. if you are academically a match but need something to push you over the edge.</p>
<p>I actually don’t mind Wesleyan one bit, but someone, I think from Wesleyan, took a cheap shot at Vassar a few pages back so I put Wesleyan back to its place, US News and all.<br>
Michael Bay is just aweful.</p>
<p>Wesleyan is a top, top school. The reason it’s not competing with Williams and Amherst and Pomona is because is is a VERY far-left school. very. Most Wesleyan applicants tend to like Brown, Swarthmore, and Vassar because these schools are also very very liberal.</p>
<p>The funny thing about Wes, when I toured it didn’t seem too far left in the way Bard is. Wes is really into human rights and social activism, but not in the “everyone can do whatever they want way”. I guess I’ll see when I start there in the fall.</p>
<p>also, “the cheap shot” – if you want to call it that – came at post #7, in reference to the relative difficulty of women gaining entrance at WesWSA vs. Vassar. It wasn’t a cheap shot – it was fairly accurate.</p>
<p>Well, as long as Wesleyan isn’t a place where the like of Margaree Little running rampage then it should be fine.</p>
<p>It was this
</p>
<p>hard what? to get into? That’s a cheap shot, elevating Wes status to knock down Vassar.</p>
<p>I would say they are equal in the case of admissions, but they have much different academic strengths. However, Vassar is very hungry for straight males, it’s a huge problem there.</p>
<p>The 60/40 ratio is standard at Vassar, though – I think they plan on keeping it that way.</p>
<p>And they surely don’t know the sexual orientation of their applicants (unless explicitly stated through essays/extracurriculars).</p>
<p>I believe the colloquy that preceded the “cheap shot” concerned whether or not an 1850 SAT was good enough to get into Vassar? The poster who made this assertion happened to be a recruited athlete. I don’t think NewYorka meant to say that Vassar was an easier school academically. I do think it is harder for women to get into Wesleyan than into Vassar; there’s a gender quota at Wesleyan that doesn’t exist at Vassar. It’s also easier for women to get into Wellesley, Bryn Mawr and Barnard. Why is this news?</p>
<p>When I talked to Vassar’s crew coach, I was told they were looking to make the ratio closer to 50/50. I think they are hoping that with an increase of male there would be an increase in straight males, which seems to be a problem among the girls I know who attend.</p>
<p>Anyway, this is what I was told about Vassar’s ratio: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vassar-college/481364-girls-vs-boys.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vassar-college/481364-girls-vs-boys.html</a></p>
<p>Interesting story:</p>
<p>I applied to 10 schools, helter-skelter, and Swarthmore was definitely “just another school”, an afterthought (I was, and am still, to a degree, uncomfortable with the idea of a small liberal arts school close to home).</p>
<p>I showed as little interest as possible - I mean I had never visited the campus though it was a 30 minute drive from my house. I could not name one professor, program, or idiosyncratic attribute about the school (heck, I still can’t, really), and nor had I ever been in contact with alumni, representatives, or counselors.</p>
<p>In the end, I got massive disappointments, from waitlist at Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, and UChicago to rejection at Cornell, Dartmouth, and Stanford, but I was accepted to my only liberal arts school, with an early likely letter even, with a large geographic disadvantage(?).</p>
<p>In hindsight, the clincher was that I subconsciously refused to adulterate my essays with the qualities that I knew would boost my chances at those large, big-name schools. I was genuine, and I realize it all turned out for the best because the salient point of college admissions is that it should serve as a sorting process for fit. Though I tried hard to avoid it at the time, I have come to realize that liberal arts, though it comes with size attachments, is right for me.</p>
<p>So disregard the petty advice about showing excessive interest or unnaturally subverting your pursuits or activities. If you really are so sure that you’re meant for a liberal arts school, I’m sure everything will fall into place.</p>
<p>Oh, another interesting detail:</p>
<p>Despite not expounding on a single thing I would like to do at Swarthmore, despite lacking any name-dropping references or flattering comments, despite not even mentioning the name of the school until the last sentence- my Why Swarthmore essay was the easiest for me to write (pm me if you want to read it).</p>