Smith College v.s Wesleyan University

cquin85
Thu, 05 Aug 2021 19:58:55 +0000

This is an old thread and perhaps it is unwise of me to jump in, but I’ll say I’m somewhat uniquely familiar with each school.

One of my daughters graduated from Wes and then did the well known and well funded Smith 5th year post bacc in math. I chuckle here as I do in other threads at any notion that the quality of education is going to vary among schools in this class … recognizing the OP didn’t ask that particular question but it always pops into my head in these comparison discussions. It should go without saying that a kid would be beautifully educated at either school.

My D (and I) loved them both. This kiddo was the one who I thought profiled well for the someone who would thrive at all-women’s college, but it turned out that it wasn’t what she wanted at that point in her life. Discovered this on her recruiting (athletic) visit to Wellesley, and coincidentally it was on a side-trip during that swing back east that she fell in love with Wesleyan on the first visit. Smith never had a chance to get into the running; after that trip to Wesleyan it became a foregone conclusion.

The main thing is the obvious thing. Having men on campus matters … it changes almost everything, and while there are men in Northampton and other nearby schools/towns, male students are not a routine sighting on the Smith campus and your D won’t have a lot of normal day-to-day exposure to them at Smith. That was my D’s experience and consistent with what we saw on our many visits. For better or worse, depending on what you want, they’re just not really around.

Both schools have money and are lovely places to spend 4 years. As a young woman I could have seen myself at Smith. It has such a pro-student vibe … hard to describe. Whereas students love to hate their president at many colleges (and certainly at Wes), they love Kathleen and I can hardly blame them. She’s approachable and cool.

Wesleyan on the other hand is good at so many things and has the distinction of the vaunted film school and is hard to beat in the LAC sciences.

Anyway, I thought I’d plug them both. Great schools.