<p>So I visited Wesleyan and really liked the school. The campus was awesome, the tour guides seemed really cool, and I knew for sure that I was applying there. Fast-forward several months to my acceptance at Wesleyan, which due to some subsequent rejections, is now one of my top top three options. (The other two are Maryland Honors and Hopkins). I thought I would love Wesleyan, but after doing some googling and talking to some other people, I have heard some very negative things about the school. Are the aforementioned rumors true? Is it really pretentious and politically correct? </p>
<p>its not annoying the way you think it is. people say it is annoying because of the “naked” parties and “wesleyan mafia” that runs hollywood. i’m going next year, but i’ve done a lot of research on wesleyan and have visited many times, and not once did i find any of the the kids to be pretentious or overtly politically correct. i think some of the current students can answer better than me, but that is my opinion.</p>
<p>Don’t listen to Gawker. Seriously. It’s a really biased source that apparently hates all liberal schools (I mean, they had a vote to replace Oberlin as most annoying school that included other great schools like Brown and Vassar). Plus, a lot of the votes we got for “most annoying” were Wes kids voting ironically. </p>
<p>Anyway, there are a lot of stereotypes about how unltra-crazy-hippy-PC-liberal Wes is, and while you can find people like that here if you want, most people are really laid back, fun, smart, quirky, and not ultra-anything. You will have to sit through some workshops in the first week of freshmen year where you discuss PC type things (which I actually thought were a good thing, if boring), and intolerance is generally not tolerated (again, a good thing, IMO), but other than that the atmosphere is very live and let live, both in terms of who you do personally and your viewpoints (unless you purposefully pick fights with people about their views. Wes students tend to be passinate and do fight back).</p>
<p>HAHA gawker is a major joke - disgruntled conservatives. They have an axe to grind and put old rumors and stereo types on their site- really sad and lame.
Wes is awesome!!! And continually is ranked as a school where kids graduate and do great things in the world - it’s a place where you can get a great education and have fun - and most kids are really talented and bright - and nice…and socially and politically aware - not pretentious.</p>
<p>Yeah… snarky gawker has a lot of Wesleyan hate, but then, gawker doesn’t ever really <em>like</em> anybody :P</p>
<p>Pretentious, politically correct weirdos? Definitely not. An intellectual atmosphere? Certainly. An open-mindedness and lots of dialogue about sexual orientation, race, and social justice? Yeah, sure, I’d give it that. But it’s certainly not overwhelming. Pretty much Wesleyan is a regular liberal arts school… but just more awesome :D</p>
<p>anyone who replies “no” to your question is lying. i’m sorry, i’m not ‘mainstream’ or whatever either, but the school definitely has both pretentious and politically correct individuals (and yes, DEFINITELY some weirdos) running around campus.
the wesleyan student body is most emphatically NOT similar to that of williams, amherst, etc.</p>
<p>that said, the degree to which you encounter said pretentious, politically-correct individuals and, separately, weirdos is mostly due to your choice of activities. if you are involved in social justice stuff, as i am to a degree, hmm, you might encounter more people who you (prospective student) might think of as ‘politically correct’. if you live in buho or westco or earth house you will probably encounter more weirdos. if you hang out at eclectic every night you will probably meet pretentious hipsters and the skinny men/women who love them. </p>
<p>it really depends on how and where you spend your time. sure, if you come here you’ll definitely get some contact exposure to all of the broadly-defined groups of people mentioned above, but if you’re trying to tone down the weirdness/differentness factor it’s not hard to do so. that being said, having those people around definitely makes the campus atmosphere much more open, liberating, and creatively-charged. in my experience, seeing all there people passionately interested in all kinds of different things made me want to try some of them out myself. i took a few classes on things i wouldn’t necessarily have thought i would take classes on, for example, and i’ve gone to various events that weren’t exactly in the middle of my comfort zone. </p>
<p>it’s very difficult to explain this. you need to not only visit but also stay overnight, as long as you can, so you can figure out if you’ll like wesleyan. it’s definitely an acquired taste, one which I haven’t 100% acclimatized myself to yet.</p>
<p>wesleyan is a very interesting student body - not the plain vanilla at a lot of preppie type schools. But more mainstream than people think, but many people who are individuals in a very positive way!</p>
<p>wesleyan is one of the best schools on my list right now, mainly due to massive and brutal Ivy and LAC rejections. i think Wes was the only Northeastern prestige school i am accepted to.</p>
<p>i am a dyed-in-the-wool prep. i do sailing and ski and is pretty much aligned with the Economist magazine when it comes to politics. i believe in personal hygiene and appropriate dress codes. </p>
<p>wonder how that works in Wes. and still waiting for that goddamn Amherst decision…</p>
<p>Go to WesFest and see for yourself. It is an awesome school! College will be much more interesting at Wes- and there are also plenty of people who go on to work on Wall Street and become investment bankers, go to med and law school etc. But there are also screenwriters, authors, muscians, playwrights…
College shouldn’t be just another four years of prep school…zzzzzzz</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses. I think Wesleyan is my top choice right now, but I still need to do an overnight visit and decide if it will be worth paying the loans for the rest of my life (my parents are providing me with zero cash). I had just been hearing some negative things about Wes from various sources, and I wanted to ensure that they were not all that truthful. I myself am somewhat artsy, but I also love athletics and am by no means politically correct. But it seems I’ll be able to find all types of kids at Wes.</p>
<p>“College shouldn’t be just another four years of prep school…zzzzzzz”
beachluver, you make prep school sound unenjoyable lol. </p>
<p>you must not have particularly liked the prep school experience. haha.
(most people i know in other prep schools think its the most super thing in the world.)</p>
<p>although your point on Wesleyan is quite legit.</p>
<p>and its an awful thing how americans say “prep” school. here in the Commonwealth there is no “prep” about it. it should be an institution in itself, not just preparation for something else.</p>