Entrepreneur in Wesleyan - courseload

circuitrider
Sat, 29 Mar 2014 22:26:49 +0000

Based on your prior posts, I have to plead “no contest” when it comes to the relative advantages of the Stanford engineering and business/finance departments which are world renowned and the Wesleyan engineering and business/finance departments which are non-existent. If I had to guess, I would say about 90% of the courses at Wesleyan are highly research oriented, speculative, experimental and probably inspired as much by the passionate interests of the 300 or so people who teach there as by the demands of any particular marketplace. That being said, it does make the most of its small size by creating niches for the occasional common interest that has no formal rubric or department of its own. Film Studies started out that way; Biophysics started out that way and it looks as if “design studies” may be going through a similar nascent metamorphosis:
https://www.wesleyan.edu/engineering/courses_research_opportunities.html

Also, I wouldn’t discount the strengths of a highly motivated student culture when it comes to putting to “practical” use the things that are learned in the classroom. People are constantly making films even though the Wesleyan film program doesn’t particularly emphasize film production and I suspect the same is true for entrepreneurs:
http://wesleyanargus.com/2013/04/22/wesquared/

In general, I would say, the longer you are at Wesleyan the more adept you become at scoping out Wesmaps, the online course catlogue, and making these sorts of connections on your own. It’s like making a virtue out of necessity.