<p>Hi Hey Hello! Feel free to ask a current WesStudent about anything Wes related! Just post here and your inquiries will be answered promptly!</p>
<p>Your retention rate is only 95%, why do 5% transfer out?</p>
<p>Hi Wrestle21 thank you for your question! First of all, in comparison to many institutions, our 95% rentention rate is very high. Every university has students transfer out for many reasons whether it has to do with financial circumstances or personal preferences.</p>
<p>Hope that helps! :)</p>
<p>^^Agreed. It’s difficult to make generalizations regarding such a small sample, but, the few that I am familiar with all involved someone being bitten by an academic bug while at Wesleyan, burning through the available courses and wishing to pursue it at a larger university. Personally, I think it’s great tha people are able to find such inspiration while at Wesleyan. Two of the better known Wesleyan transfers are David Brewer, 51st Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court [David</a> Josiah Brewer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Josiah_Brewer]David”>David J. Brewer - Wikipedia) and Anthony Marx, the recently departed President of Amherst <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Marx[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Marx</a>.</p>
<p>Overall, have you & the students you know liked the professors there? How’s the interaction between students and professors in & out of the classroom?
Thanks:)</p>
<p>While of course some professors are more popular than others, students generally have only good things to say about the professors at Wes. Wesleyan professors are here because they want to teach- no classes are taught by grad students or teaching assistants. That being said, in my experience, professors are eager to get to know students on a personal level. Professors often make it a point to attend their students’ athletic events and extracurricular performances.</p>
<p>The average class size at Wes is 19, so there is plenty of opportunities in the classroom for professors and students to interact; professors almost always stick around a little after class and answer questions. Outside the classroom, all professors have office hours in which you are free to head into their office and visit them. I have even gone to meet with professors during their office hours even though I wasn’t enrolled in one of the professor’s classes.</p>
<p>It’s also not uncommon to see students take their professors to lunch or dinner at the student center, and I personally have played against a team of professors in a intramural softball game! Overall, students really get along with their professors here. Professors don’t place themselves on a pedestal and are generally eager to reach out to their students.</p>
<p>Hope that helps; thanks!</p>
<p>Does Wesleyan University ever feel small? How do you feel about the size?</p>
<p>How difficult is it to get into the class of your choice?</p>
<p>What makes Wesleyan stand out from other top east coast LAC’s? Why choose Wesleyan over another school of equivalent academic merit/prestige?</p>
<p>Dear aikaterine, I was not sure if you were referring to the physical size of campus or the size of our student body, so I answered both!</p>
<p>Honestly, I feel like we are the perfect size and our size is one of our greatest strengths: we have 2,800 undergraduates and 200 graduate students. We are larger than some of our peer institutions who have around 1,500 undergrads, but we are also smaller than others that have 5,000.</p>
<p>Putting the numbers aside, I feel a real sense of community at Wesleyan that might be missing at a larger institution. In my experience, I am constantly meeting new people either through classes, clubs, or sports. It is also really nice when walking from one end of campus to the other to see some familiar faces of your peers and professors.</p>
<p>As for our physical size, we have over 340 acres and we are in the context of Middletown, CT which is considered a Large Town/Small City. To give you an idea of how large campus is, it will only take you about 15 minutes to walk from one end of campus to the other. While most students stay on campus for weekends, we also are in a great location in close proximity to Boston, Hartford, New Haven, and New York City.</p>
<p>I hope this answers your question, let me know if you would like a more specific answer for either the physical size of campus or student body size!</p>
<p>Dear warriorboy648, thank you for your question! The short answer to this would be: no, it really is not difficult at all to get into the classes of your choice even though 80% of our classes are capped at 20 students. Below I have outlined the procedure that a Wesleyan student would follow for the Pre-Registration, Adjustment, and Add/Drop periods. </p>
<p>Before each semester there is a Pre-Registration period where students rank their top six classes. Then each student meets personally with his or her advisor to discuss, change, and ultimately approve the selected courses. A few weeks later you will hear back with what classes you have gotten into. You then will get assigned a time to adjust the classes you are enrolled in. Finally, the first two weeks of classes is a live Add/Drop period where you can add classes and drop classes without getting approval from your advisor. During this time, if you have not gotten into a class you are particularly interested and you see online that there are no seats available in that class; this is when you would speak directly to the professor. The professor would either enroll you instantly, or ask you to go to the first day of class to see how much room is available (if you don’t show up to class on the first day, many professors will drop you). </p>
<p>In my experience, I have found it extremely easy to get into every class that I have wanted to take. You really just need to be active in showing the professor your interest in the class and professors are usually extremely accommodating. For example, in my Intro to Psychology class the professor enrolled every student that showed up to the first day as long as there were enough seats in the classroom. This meant that the 11 TA’s were asked to sit on the floor! That probably isn’t the most typical situation, but it does happen.</p>
<p>If for some reason you do not get into a class after requesting it and talking to the professor, the next time you apply for that same class your chances of enrollment will improve. However, our professors really do go out of their way to try and accommodate everyone who shows interests. </p>
<p>I thought I would include the link to our Course Catalog, if you wanted to browse some of our current classes: <a href=“Wesleyan University”>Wesleyan University;
<p>Dear willstardust, thank you for your question! Below I have outlined a few of the things that I believe makes Wesleyan stand out among other liberal arts colleges. </p>
<p>All liberal arts colleges, to a certain degree, exhibit various similarities in their teaching philosophies and academic standards. However, Wesleyan does have many attributes that distinguish us from our peer institutions, and some of the more notables ones are our size, open curriculum, and research opportunities.</p>
<p>Our open curriculum offers students the flexibility to design their own university education. An open curriculum simply means that we have no core curriculum and no required classes. It also means that everyone in your classes truly wants to be there, because you will never be forced to take anything that you wouldnt want to take. Because the requirements to graduate is 32 credits (with one course usually equal to one credit), and each major usually required 8-10 credits, students often double major in two distinctly different fields of study (Wesleyan does not offer minors). Its not uncommon to have friends who are psychology and dance majors, neuroscience and studio art majors, and economics and East Asian studies majors. </p>
<p>Wesleyan is also a big-small school. Our student size is a little bigger than those of many of our peer institutions. The size allows our university to receive funding for graduate-level research in the natural sciences (and to a lesser extent, the social/behavioral sciences), but most of the research is being conducted by undergraduates. Our size also ensures that our students never feel suffocated by surrounding them with the same people constantly, but also ensures that they dont feel like theyre in a sea of students.</p>
<p>And I mentioned it earlier, but the research opportunities at Wesleyan are short of amazing. For a small liberal arts college, we receive a large amount of funding from the National Science Foundation (more than twice the amount receive by the next peer institution), and thats really reflected in the quality of the research thats occurring here. Wesleyan consistently publishes, with most articles being co-authored by undergraduate students. </p>
<p>Our size, open curriculum, and research opportunities are just a few of the things, in my opinion, that separates us from other liberal arts colleges. Wesleyan has a lot of other great attributes such as our diverse student body, small class sizes, strong performing arts, our prestigious film studies department, great athletic facilities, and so many other things that I could have gone into greater detail about. </p>
<p>It really is the prospective students responsibility to differentiate between the liberal arts colleges (because they inherently share similar philosophies) to decide which characteristics fit what you are looking for most in your college experience. I hope this helps shed light on some of the unique characteristics of Wesleyan!</p>
<p>Here’s an NGram comparing Williams, Wesleyan, Pomona and Amherst:
[Google</a> Ngram Viewer](<a href=“http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=the+Wesleyan+University%2Cthe+Amherst+College%2Cthe+Williams+College%2Cthe+Pomona+College&year_start=1930&year_end=2011&corpus=0&smoothing=3]Google”>http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=the+Wesleyan+University%2Cthe+Amherst+College%2Cthe+Williams+College%2Cthe+Pomona+College&year_start=1930&year_end=2011&corpus=0&smoothing=3)</p>
<p>How would you classify the lgbtq population at wesleyan? are there enough gay men that there is a sizable dating-scene? is the school pretty welcoming to sexual minorities?</p>
<p>What is the atmosphere like regarding the drinking/drug scene? I’ve read on various sites that it is pretty big and many students do one or the other or both. I personally don’t want to get involved in either but don’t want to feel socially ostracized or peer pressured into doing so. I’m being recruited by a coach there who said he has a better shot helping me out the earlier I apply, but it feels the only thing keeping me from making that decision is what I’ve read about the drinking and drugs.</p>
<p>What do they look for on transcripts? Certain classes, ranking, certain amount of clubs joined. That kind of thing.</p>
<p>Dear spainsummer11, thanks for your question regarding gay life at Wesleyan. Wesleyan has an incredibly active LGBTQ community and we are extremely accepting of all minorities, including sexual minorities. </p>
<p>There is a student-run Queer Resource Center as well as a wide variety of student groups dedicated to exploring and understanding what it means to be queer. These include SPECTRUM (for queer students of color), Trans/Gender Group, Gay/Straight Alliance, the Queer Social Committee (for organizing queer events), as well as an LGBTQ Alumni Network. More information on this can be found here: [Wesleyan</a> University: Queer Life at Wesleyan](<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/queer/resources.html]Wesleyan”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/queer/resources.html).</p>
<p>We also have Open House, which is a program house that receives funding from the university for students interesting in exploring sexual identity ([Housing](<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/reslife/housing/program/open_house.htm]Housing[/url]”>Housing)</a>). Some of the events they have had (and are open to everyone on campus) are a queer ice cream social, the queer prom, and various speakers to talk about queer rights, identity, etc.</p>
<p>There is definitely a LGBTQ presence on campus and students are very tolerant and respectful of others’ interests and identities. However, it is not a dominating social scene because there is not one social standard at Wesleyan, rather, it is just one of the many facets that makes our social scene dynamic. I hope this answered your question!</p>
<p>Dear punkadilly, below is the answer to your question regarding drugs and alcohol on campus–thanks for your question!</p>
<p>The drug and alcohol scene at any college is going to be pretty similar across the board, and Wesleyan isnt really much different in the sense that there are drugs and alcohol on campus. However, we have a very diverse, open, and accepting student body and you would never feel pressure to do something if you didnt want to.</p>
<p>In my experience at Wesleyan, I play a varsity sport and I have friends on my team who have never had a sip of alcohol in their lives, but they still have a very active social life (either through team activities or outside the team). I think you would quickly realize if you came to Wes, that your fear of feeling socially ostracized for not partaking in drinking/drugs, really wouldnt happen because of all of the events going on every night that do not revolve around any party scene whatsoever. Any day of the week (including weekends) you could see a play happening at the 92 Theater, attend a potluck dinner, go to a concert, watch one of movies in the Wesleyan Film Series, tutor at a local school, make ice cream sundaes with your class dean, and cheer on friends at a sporting event (if you want more examples check out: [Events</a> Wesleying](<a href=“http://wesleying.org/category/events/]Events”>http://wesleying.org/category/events/)). </p>
<p>The Office of Residential Life has also created housing options that receive funding from the university for students who wish to have a 100% substance free living environment. For Freshman, there is a substance free hall, and for Sophomores or Juniors there is a Well-Being program house. I have included the links below if you would like to learn more about that. </p>
<p>Substance free hall: [url=<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/reslife/housing/residence/butterfield.htm]Housing[/url”>Housing]Housing[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Well-Being Program house: [url=<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/reslife/housing/program/wellbeing.htm]Housing[/url”>Housing]Housing[/url</a>]</p>
<p>I hope this helped!</p>
<p>OK. Here goes. You said we could ask anything. My son is attending Wesleyan in the fall and wants to buy a rug for his dorm room. How do we find out the dimensions of singles in Butterfield (3rd floor) overlooking the “butthole”? Thanks!!!</p>
<p>WesTalk:
Thank you for posting these details. Would it be possible to estimate the size of the “incredibly active LGBTQ community?” Is it 10% of the Wesleyan student population or more? </p>
<p>Also when we asked on a recent tour if there was a male only dorm, ie., not-co-ed, the answer was yes. Is that male dorm mostly inhabited by sexually diverse community members? And what is a gender-neutral dorm? (another term we heard on the tour…)</p>