What are decisions based on?

cquin85
Thu, 15 Sep 2022 03:10:15 +0000

Mwfan1921:

Part of my point is how holistic can Wesleyan’s admission process be when 86% of admitted students took calculus, 82% BCP, and 78% have 4 years/level 4 FL? I doubt the full applicant set had anywhere close to those numbers, meaning lots of those applicants never had a chance.

Excuse my ignorance here, but is the 78% BCP and 78% 4 years of FL really that significant? My sense from my own milieu is that most kids with, let’s call it, ‘above average interest in getting into a decent college’ are going to have the BCP and 4 years of FL covered. In the average Seattle-area high school, your average guidance counselor is going to tell the kid who wants to go Gonzaga or UW or a lot of other places in the PNW that they should take 4 years of FL. In fact, because 9th grade is still middle school in my area, you had a ton of kids heading over to the district HS in the morning to take their FL class before matriculating there the next year. I drove two of those carpools. The vast majority of those kids ended up (happily I should add) at schools like WWU, WSU, UW, Gonzaga, Oregon, Oregon State, Willamette, etc. etc. Solid schools but none were gunning for NESCAC or Chicago or the Ivy League, etc. etc. The latter group tended to be IB or heavily loaded AP kids, and of course all of them would take 4 yrs. of FL w/o even being told.

I’ll admit Wes’ stat on calc in HS seems pretty high. With my kids and the company they kept I guess I’ve become so used to all this that even the calc. part didn’t jump out at me immediately. But, yes, that seem high and it jibes with what we heard on the recruiting trail: “Wes wants to see math,” and it’s not a slam dunk that you’ll overcome not having that with other talents.

Edit: I just read a piece in the Argus about the class of 2026, and now realize that “BCP” means lab work in all three, not just one of them. So, ok, your point is well taken; that’s a lot too. Biology, Chem AND Physics does tend to sort a different kind of kid.

In terms of academic preparation, 87% of admitted students have completed math through calculus, 82% have done coursework in the three lab sciences (biology, chemistry, and physics), and 78% have four-year proficiency in a single foreign language.