Wes' Prestige as recognized by oher colleges

madjoy
Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:23:57 +0000

I’m also going to weigh in (as a current student - a senior who has been here for 4 years) that flyingpig’s descriptions match my own experiences way better than MrPimpateer’s do. Also, as a sophomore (it sounds like), Mr_Pimpateer has not experienced social science classes at the upper level possibilities which are far more “in-depth” and thus his argument that “there are only intro classes” in a lot of subfields seems biased.

As a sociology major, I’ve had an amazing experience here. It’s true that because Wesleyan is a small school, our departments are necessarily smaller than that of a larger school - so for many subfields of each department only have maybe one professor representing it. For example, there’s one professor who studies the sociology of education, and one who studies the sociology of religion, etc. Then there’s Charles lemert, who is a famous social theorist and is the most ridiculous (in a good way) professor I’ve ever had. HOWEVER, this doesn’t mean that you’re only able to take the intro class in each subfield, because especially when you get into your junior/senior years and have already taken the intro classes, you aren’t limited by what’s in the course booklet. You can do a senior essay or senior thesis working one-on-one with an individual professor on a research project that interests you, or you can do an independent seminar or tutorial if a professor has something of particular interest to you. There are also small upper level topical seminars that kind of move with the interests of the students in the class.

I don’t know much about History or Government, but the Psych and Sociology departments are great. It’s especially easy to do research in the psych department if you’re interested. I also have a lot of friends who are involved in Econ research through the Quantitative Analysis Center summer program - it enables you to get a stipend to do research with a social science professor at Wes over the summer. It’s an awesome program and I highly recommend it.

Also:

You accuse flying_pig of mistakenly believing that Wes is “a place at which everything is perfect and all classes are small/intellectually stimulating/well-taught and the students are all brainy offbeat intellectuals who, nevertheless, rarely touch drugs or party”.

Other than the “rarely party” thing, that has actually pretty much been my experience. I’ve had pretty much an ideal “liberal arts college” experience here, and now that I’m leaving in a month and a half, I’m so sad to have to leave it behind. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine what Wesleyan could have done to improve my college experience. Sure, I had some tough times, got too stressed out, had friend drama, whatever - but it was all (a) stuff that everyone everywhere goes through and (b) my responsibility, not Wesleyan’s. If you don’t like the people you’re friends with, pimpateer, maybe you should find different friends? I’m not sure why you’re so bitter about the Wesleyan experience or even what exactly you think is so bad about the school.

But you know what? My classes are small. And intellectually stimulating. And with very few exceptions, well-taught. The students I’ve met mostly are intelligent offbeat intellectuals. Some of them know how to party and some of them prefer not to.

It sounds like you’re not enjoying Wes. Since you have two years left, maybe you should think about specific things that are making you unhappy, and try to fix them. Talk to that professor who taught the intro class about doing a tutorial next year in early modern European politics. maybe find friends who don’t do drugs all the time, if you hate the fact that your friends do drugs all the time (I promise you, most social circles here don’t). And while giving your perspective to people on CollegeConfidential is great, and it’s good to have someone say some of the negatives of the school on the site, making every single OP feel like they’d hate Wesleyan is not constructive. Obviously Wes is right for some people (like me, and probably flying_pig - I felt the same way ze did as a prefrosh) and maybe it’s not for others. But pooping on everyone’s dreams? Not cool, dude.