<p>so i got into both and i don’t know which one would be a better fit.
i want to study environmental studies or psychology and i don’t know which one has a better program. also i live close to nyc so wesleyan is a much easier commute and i like its flexibility with classes but my parents think uchicago is more prestigious</p>
<p>Chicago is more well known throughout the world than Wesleyan. My older daughter graduated from Chicago and says just the name has really opened many doors for her.
Good luck with your decision.</p>
<p>Wesleyan and UChicago, both outstanding institutions. You asked which is a better fit, and that you want to study Environmental Studies or Psychology and which one is a better program. You of course know that Wesleyan has a new college called the College of the Environment, which is a unique interdisciplinary major, and which the current president, Michael Roth, created and has devoted substantial funding to expand. It will certainly be one of his landmark achievements, and if you follow Roth and see how media-genic he is, a Wes degree from the COE will carry a lot of weight and prominence. </p>
<p>In addition, regarding psychology, I am a proud alum of Wesleyan with a College of Social Studies major and also a PhD in psychology, and when I interviewed for graduate school in California, the first thing the professor who interviewed me said was, “So you graduated from Wesleyan? A fine school!”. I was admitted as the youngest student in my class to that grad school, in a year when only 8% of the applicants were accepted. Wesleyan’s reputation was a major factor in getting in and its name has only grown since. Frankly, if you are talking about grad school admission, I don’t feel there would be much, if any, difference. It turned out that about half of my social science professors at Wes had PhD degrees from Chicago, but few of them were undergrads at Chicago.</p>
<p>If you have visited both campuses, you have seen how much bigger UC is and, being in a very urbanized area with all those pluses and minuses, it is quite different from Wesleyan’s smaller, safer and more personal atmosphere. The Wes campus is tucked between Connecticut farmlands and a charming and convenient small city downtown area. I remember my many bike rides down Long Lane when I was an undergrad at times when I just wanted to get away from the intensity of my classes and get back into nature down by Wadsworth Falls.</p>
<p>It is a wonderful choice you have to make. Go where your heart tells you. You can’t go wrong with either one!</p>
<p>Good job. I’m envious that you even have the choice. I got rejected from UChicago and accepted at Wes. Congrats.</p>
<p>I was accepted to both schools as well and ended up choosing Wesleyan. Major factors for me that I think you might want to consider:
- Requirements… Wesleyan has relatively few requirements, the General Education Requirements that we do have you don’t even have to complete unless you are intending on getting honors. UChicago as I’m sure you know is very different in that regard, they have a LOT of requirements to fulfill. If you want a great breadth of study in your education this is great, but if you’re hoping to take all hard science or social science classes and never have to take another English class then UChicago might not be the right choice.
- Attention given to undergraduates… The second biggest concern for me was that UChicago did not seem to pay as much attention to undergraduates as they did to their much larger graduate student population. I wasn’t sure that undergrads at Chicago got the same voice and inclusion in influencing policy, making events happen on campus, working with the administration. At Wesleyan the students are all involved in how the school is run, from being involved in their major dept. to the Wesleyan Students Assembly. I didnt get the same feeling from Chicago.
- Weekend life… for me this one actually swayed in Chicago’s favor. Wesleyan has frats, it has parties, it has drugs. Chicago has all of these things too, but I got the sense that their students are too overworked to spend every Friday and Saturday night partying it up. That’s certainly not something you have to do at Wes, but it is a larger portion of the weekend scene here. At Chicago it seems pretty easy to go off campus and into a big city for the night if you felt like it, at Wesleyan unless you have a car or know someone who does you’re stuck in Middletown.
- Classes… take a look at the classes offered in the departments you are interested in. I really liked that Wesleyan has a lot of seminar style classes. In fact, I have never had a class bigger than 20 people, and I like that! The professors also make themselves very available here. I’ve found they’re happy to meet even when they don’t have office hours, and they’re happy to incorporate student feedback into their class. I’ve had lunch with quite a few of my professors, and feel like I easily built a strong relationship with professors in my major dept.</p>
<p>Hope that adds some food for thought into your consideration between the two schools. And congratulations!</p>
<p>I’m going to Wesleyan next year. I live in Chicago and had taken several undergrad courses at UChicago, and I can tell you that my experiences with them were relatively mixed. Although the professors are brilliant, undergrad teaching seems a bit lax at the institution. For instance, a professor who taught microeconomics at Chicago made up a lame excuse about going to Colorado for a ski trip in the summer and deferred an undergrad who desperately needed help to a TA. The main problem with Chicago is its subpar focus on undergrads. But then again, Chicago has a bigger name.</p>