@magmack Yes! Wes tends to be very generous with financial aid. Especially after this year’s successful fundraising campaign (THIS IS WHY), Wes was able to stack up a lot of financial aid!
yep, search wesdamits2020 on facebook
Thanks, @liberality It has just been interesting how much financial offers can vary.
I’ve always been curious about Mitt’s low acceptance ratio, even lower than Williams. Yet all the stats I see suggest you need higher stats for Williams, Swarth, Bowdoin, and at least comparable for Wesleyan. At my S’s school the ave GPA required for Wes admin is meaningfully higher than Mitt, based on 8 years of Naviance data. I wonder if the Mitt pool has a larger portion of applicants with lower stats?
@citivas and @liberality my general experience with three kids who attended prep school - one is still there - with sharp GCs would put Midd and Wes in the same general difficulty level. Admit rates as you both know is a blunt measure and doesnt reveal everything you need to know.
Williams I think is a smidge harder than both, but it’s not huge. One of mine got in and one was waitlisted. The one who was waited is at Pomona via Middlebury transfer.
Why did he/she transfer from Midd to Pomona? BTW, how hard is that to do – transfer from one competitive school to another?
Test scores?
@liberality It was kind of odd, but I’m average academically for both schools, maybe even slightly below average for Midd, so it could have gone either way for both. I had applied ED to Midd, and was deferred, but I wrote a really strong supplement directly to the admissions officer, and I think that could have swayed their decision in my favor.
Looking at my high school’s results for Wesleyan, I’m the only person with above a 30 ACT and 4.0 weighted to get rejected lol. Oh well, guess there was something they didn’t like in my app. I was also rejected at Bowdoin and Williams as far as liberal arts go.
@wholikestostudy: “‘Caliber’” is subjective, as your own usage indicates, but within NESCAC, and by standardized scoring alone (and without adjusting for text-flexible policies), Wesleyan (#40 nationally) places between Hamilton (#37) and Middlebury (#51). Congratulations on your acceptance to a great (beyond simple statistical factors) school.
(“610 Smartest Colleges,” Business Insider.)
@merc81 Wesleyan is #32 on that list and Midd and Hamilton are at #38. Interesting list and is consistent with my general view of the general view: Wes and Midd (and Hamilton) are comparable schools.
@MiddleburyDad2: By including the “10” you will access the current list. The fluctuations themselves serve to emphasize your point.
I see. Good catch.
S got into Wesleyan but with the worse FA package of his 8 admits including pomona, swarthmore and bowdoin. Makes me wonder if there was a mistake. They were so nice to our family including us at a passover holiday dinner last spring.
Wesleyan’s endowment per student is not very high unfortunately - they actually considered converting to being need aware. their EFC calculation is supposedly never as good as some other top LACs.
In particular, Pomona closely followed by Swat have a lot more money.
@khanam - Wesleyan is need aware, but as a practical matter, 95% of all admitted students never have their ability to pay considered or reviewed.
@circuitrider oh, i thought wesleyan was trying to convert to being need aware but had not done so due to student protests back in the 90s. but on checking some more, you are right.
@kahanam, that’s right. Relative to most other small colleges, they’re swimming in money, but relative to that list, not so much. Wes is working to fix that - there was a time when Wesleyan was among the wealthiest LACs in the country. But some bad decisions and poor endowment management hurt them. They are soon wrapping up a capital campaign that, I’'m told, has been very successful. I see money pouring in to the school from many sources, and rumors of some big gifts on the horizon. But for now, I’m not surprised that Wes couldn’t out-spend Swat or Pomona. Bowdoin, I think, it a bit closer, but I could be wrong.
For us, fortunately or unfortunately, it doesn’t matter. “Zero” is the same at every school. So other than private scholarships, we are ‘full pay’, even with two in school.
@MiddleburyDad2 got it about wes. Yes, Pomona has a no loan, only grants policy which obviously puts it close to Princeton etc in net cost.
oh and you have no idea how many merit scholarships my daughter applied to. That’s the only way to work around the Zero problem as the total cost just keeps escalating in our face. my daughter is an IB student so she drowns in essays as it is… she claims she will be diagnosed with “essay-itis” soon due to the college apps, scholarship apps, IB EE & other essays she has had to do.
@khanam, I hear you. All three of mine have been full IB kids. I agree; they write like crazy. But it pays off in college. One thing people told us over and over was that IB diploma kids are ready for college no matter where they go, and I have found that view to be true with mine. Even the one who is given to laziness and procrastination more than her siblings had no problem with the academic transition to a selective and rigorous college. I love the program, but I do wonder, at times, if it doesn’t ask too much of their high school years. Even my most gifted child was working hard every day, 7 days a week, her senior year. Senior year is brutal in our IB program … particularly because everyone else is cruising at that point. 
@MiddleburyDad2 Yes I have been told that too. But, man, do they fry the brains of the IB DP seniors or what! My daughter has had very little time for any extra-curricular activities of late. She is a gifted artist and has IB Art in school but has no time to further develop her portfolio these days. We are really hoping this makes it way easier for her to deal with college. She looks at the AP kids and complains about how relaxed they look.
Oh and on top of everything else, somehow she managed to finagle herself into 5 IB HL classes and only 1 SL class - she will take only 4 HL exams but she has the workload of 5. So I told her this was her own doing despite my attempts to stop her and she can not complain about the incremental workload.