I have finally narrowed down my options to these two schools. And I hope you can rate the following criteria out of ten with a comment or review. (Btw I’m an Chinese international student who has studied in a US private school for 3 years. I don’t have any financial aid or scholarships, just straight up full tuition).
Academics (I'm not likely to major in science or engineering at least for now)
Reputation/Prestige (among top grad schools and companies)
Location
Facilities and resources
Value of cost
Safety
Outcome/opportunities (chance to get into top grad schools/career development)
Food and dorm
Quality of life
Athletics
If you think of anything else that is necessary to consider, please add them to the list.
I’ve been doing research and consulting current students for the past few days and I’m leaning toward Wes. I just wanna get more insights. Any input would be deeply appreciated! Thanks!
Academics - Wesleyan has a lower student/faculty ratio, but, that's not surprising since it is a private university. You can get a great non-STEM education at either place.
Reputation/Prestige - top graduate schools and employers are aware of both schools.
Location - W&M hands-down, the winner. Nothing quite like being part of a historic Colonial restoration project.
Facilities and resources - Again, I don't think either school has a clear advantage here. Once you step off the mainly historic quads, the facilities get quite modern.
Value of cost - Here's where it gets dicey. You're probably paying OOS tuition for a public university at W&M. For essentially the same amount of money you would be sharing space with three times the number of total students (grad and undergrad) and larger classes than you would at Wesleyan. Also, not to put too fine a point on it - two thirds of your classmates at W&M will be from the same state.
Safety - Crime is a scary thing whenever it happens, especially on a quiet campus. According to Clery Statistics Wesleyan has a big lead in reported rape cases. Some people argue that it is because Wesleyan does a better job at encouraging people to report such occurrences. Either way, it's not a pretty statistic
Outcome/opportunities (chance to get into top grad schools/career development) - IMO, it depends on what you make of your opportunities (i.e., grades and test scores.)
Food and dorm - Wesleyan has an unusual graduated independent living approach to student housing with hundreds of small houses dotting the campus. I'm guessing W&M has more conventional dorms.
Quality of life - I've heard great things about the level of student satisfaction at both places.
Athletics - Not clear what you are looking for here.
If you are interested in participating in intercollegiate athletics, then this is much more likely at Wesleyan. Wes is a much smaller school, yet sponsors more varsity teams. Furthermore, the bar for athletic talent is relatively low, since Wes is a Division III school. So Wes has lots of athletic participation: about 21.5% of enrolled students are varsity athletes. The rate for W&M is much lower, only about 8.2%.
If you are interested in following intercollegiate athletics as a fan, then W&M is better, because it is a Division I school with serious athletes playing on athletic scholarships. However, the difference may not be great as you might expect. W&M plays football at the D1-FCS level, which is still “minor league” as far as the average college football fan is concerned. W&M is theoretically eligible for the NCAA basketball tournament, but has never actually qualified. So W&M sports, while entertaining, aren’t generally featured prominently on national media, as UVa or Virginia Tech games might be.
If you are going to compare these two particular schools, you should really be aware of the pronounced differences in funkiness. Wes is generally regarded as a pretty funky place. At W&M, the “historic Colonial restoration project” atmosphere has its charms, but is arguably deficient in terms of bringing the funk.
For a tourist, Williamsburg is definitely a more interesting place to visit than Middletown, CT. However, you can tour Williamsburg in about a day, then when the novelty wears off, you’re out in the boondocks 2.5 hours from Washington DC. Middletown is roughly the same distance to NYC, but maybe a little less to Boston and fairly close to many other college campuses. On balance, I think I’d prefer Wesleyan’s location … but not for ~$10K/year more (if location were the only difference that mattered to me).
LOL. I’ve been following @jackwang0703 for exactly one year now and his thinking process has been remarkably consistent: academics, location and prestige, in that order. I think @Corbett is the first poster to ever ask him how he plans on having fun.
I think they are roughly comparable schools in reputation, academics. W&M is over twice as large, public, and is in a different area (Mid-Atlantic vs New England). If you could visit, you would probably get a sense for which you prefer. If you cannot, I believe both have reputations for having relatively happy student bodies.
The “funk” is referring to the students at Wesleyan and the type of school it is. Although a great institution with tons of talent, their process and classes, along with many of the people are very “out there” and not in the good way. I have heard too many stories of the social hardships and turning to intense drugs (not sure if you heard of the overdose story of students last year). It’s a tough place to live and the community or Wesleyan doesn’t make it any better. W&M on the other hand has an amazing community, bigger but stronger, and a much better town. Same distances from the major city, same academics (both semi hands on if that’s what you want) and W&M just has a statistically better “college life”. In every respect I would choose W&M over Wesleyan.
You misunderstood me. Your thinking process was fine. It got you from where you started which was with a list of two dozen colleges with virtually nothing in common except that they were all excellent colleges and universities, to where you are today with a tough decision between two excellent American colleges. Your parents must be very proud.
W&M is a school that is rooted in history and tradition, going back to the 17th Century. It is so old and full of history – perhaps more than any other US school – that the campus is almost a museum. W&M students tend to embrace this heritage.
Wesleyan, on the other hand, has students that are known for rejecting tradition, and experimenting with new ideas, even ideas that may initially seem crazy. Funky = new, different, crazy; could be either good or bad. Wesleyan is perhaps funkier than another US school.
So these two schools – though both academically strong – have very different “personalities”. W&M is known for heritage and tradition; Wesleyan is known for unconventional thinking and behavior. You wanted info on ten criteria – yet none of your criteria addressed what many people would see as the most obvious and important difference between the two schools.
@circuitrider Oh that’s what you meant. Thank you then. Well, for international students from China, we tend to look at schools only by their rankings. And that definitely shapes our thinking process.
I probably portray myself as a pretty typical Asian/Chinese on this site, but I don’t normally study a lot or very hard. I basically just muddled through my super competitive middle school in Shanghai usually in the top 30-40% without much dedication.
So what do I do for fun? I watch movies in the movie theatres, go to different types of concerts, see some drama or plays once in a while, play basketball and tennis sometimes, go to the gym to work out every day in summer when I’m in Shanghai, try out different restaurants with family and friends, and most importantly, travel. I have traveled a lot with my parents and it has become a family tradition. I’ve visited over 15 countries in Europe, Asia, and America by far. There’s nothing like being physically present in a foreign land to discover everything that you might have heard other people talking about. I learned various cultures, removed stereotypes, and perceived my own country from a new perspective. I just love traveling. It has and will continue to help me become more cosmopolitan.
I highly disagree with some of people’s descriptions on W&M. It is traditional, true, but their learning experience and philosophies require for great intellectual thinking as well as new and informed thought processes. Aside from that there are many flaws within Wesleyan such as a huge influx in tuition and only 2 credits of AP transfers. W&M is just the better choice.
I don’t think that either W&M or Wes is inherently a “better choice”. But I do think that Wes (for better or worse) is a significantly funkier place than the College of William and Mary, and that an informed decision about the two schools should include consideration of this point.
I would say the same thing if someone was comparing, say, Reed College vs. Washington & Lee. They are both highly regarded LACs, with comparable admissions standards, and each can be a great fit for the right person. But most people would have a distinct preference for one school or the other, and this is in part because one school is much funkier than the other.
Now I’m starting to consider the more diverse yet still fairly traditional, Richmond again, in comparison to W&M.
The reason I didn’t completely take Richmond out of the list is that it has the best reviews on Niche in terms of quality of life including food, dorm, campus, location.
I’m not sure about its academics though. I know it probably has the best business program among the three, but as far as academics and prestige in general, I think it is at a lower level perhaps slightly. I made that assumption based on various rankings and some friends’ opinions.
Don’t put so much weight on rankings. Most Americans just don’t. Richmond definitely is on the same tier as W&M.
@Corbett: You definition of “funky” is strange. I’d say Reed is similar to W&M in that they both have intellectual students and rigorous/tough courses but good teaching while W&L is definitely conservative old money (a bit like Richmond) and Wes is out there (funky).
