Wellesley vs. Smith, Wellesley vs. Swarthmore

WendyMouse
Sat, 19 Nov 2005 21:28:06 +0000

Ecape,
This I found interesting:
“I realized I really wanted to go to an east-coast ruralesque LAC. Therefore, I think Wellesley may be a good option, since it’s better academically than Smith and still offers courses I’d want to take, yet is close enough I could visit my Smith friends on weekends.”

This says a lot to me, particularly about the quality of friends that you have made at Smith. You want to transfer, but you don’t want to leave your friends behind, and are willing to drive four hours round trip to see them and not make friends at your new institution. That’s the equivalent of liking your high school friends so much that you drive home on weekends to hang out at the mall. Keeping in touch is one thing, but you’d be moving on.

You’re unhappy about your classes: they’re too easy. Don’t worry, nobody here at Wellesley complains about too little work or too easy classes. If you have too much work here, you might not even make it to Smith as often as you like: four hours is a lot of time. Here, people don’t like the two hour round trip of the exchange bus to Boston (but it isn’t unused). Also, if driving to Smith becomes your sole extra-curricular activity, it will be harder to make friends. You might as well be a commuter student.

If you want more work and academiclly stimulation, I don’t doubt Smith can give that to you. I know nothing about the school, but it can’t be that much less academic focused than Wellesley is. So do more work. Do every reading twice. Overload your schedule. Double Major. Get all As, graduate Magna Cum Laude, and annoy the crap out of everyone at Smith by being that girl who does everything perfectly. If you are at a higher level than everyone else, you should have no trouble getting a job doing research with a professor. A good student is always a good student. If you do all that, then it won’t matter if Smith sends one woman every 10 years to the grad school you want: you will be that one woman who goes to that ultimate grad school.

But if you still want to get out of Smith, I’m happy at Wellesley, both with classes and friends…

By the way, have you looked at Williams? I never did, but it’s closer to Smith, and has the enivronment you probably want as well, a good academic reputation, and students there do a lot of neat stuff.