The ppl who protest are often the most ignorant on the issue(s) at hand in my experience.
Iâm all for activism and intelligent conversation but it seems at Wes itâs usually expressed through negativity. From the first words of the tour guide âTour guides at Wes DON"T walk backwards cause weâre a forward thinking institutionâ to the angry flyers all over that are critical of people - it was non stop NO. Even the info session seemed to focus on all the courses you donât have to take rather than the attributes of those you can take. Real turn off for our family. Which is a pity because in terms of intellectual discourse and strong majors on areas of interest it seems like it would be a great choice.
Wes was also the least attractive LAC we saw, by a wide margin.
ââTour guides at Wes DON"T walk backwards cause weâre a forward thinking institutionââ
I think itâs a great policy and refreshing to have a tour conducted whereby everyone doesnât have to tag along with someone walking backwards, trying to catch what they are saying. You walk, stop and talk, walk some more, stop and talk again. I think it works very well.
I have no skin in the Wesleyan game but I think it is a great college but not for everyone and that is okay. If you donât âget itâ, you donât belong there.
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@doschicos Dude! I thought you knew how this thread was supposed to work! Did we finally find the school you just couldnât bear to see getting picked on? Youâve been here since the âdoors are too heavyâ elimination.
@OCDaddy â first folks get picked on for giving daylight to Stupid Reasons Why We Took This College Off the List (we know theyâre stupid, but hey this is fun and my kid will likely get rejected anyway!!) and now weâre getting picked on for Weighty Issues That Might Actually Matter. There is no winning, lol, and yet the thread trudges along.
@doschicos Actually she kept talking the whole time and there were a cluster of students around her who could hear and then all the parents towards the back clueless. Yes she did stop for important points but much was missed by the majority of the group.
I agree that Wes is a great school for certain types and self-selecting in its appeal.
But your choice of words - âIf you donât âget itâ, you donât belong there.â - really echoes the too cool for school attitude I found off-putting. Why does it need to be defined by a thinly veiled insult? You can âget itâ and simply know its not appealing to you.
No insult intended. Youâre reading into my comment intentions that werenât there. Itâs about fit much like any other school. The âitâ refers to what Wesleyan has to offer and the fit of that. Wesleyan isnât for everyone and if one finds activism repulsive, yeah, not a good fit.
Sure, go ahead a diss Wesleyan. Itâs the dissing of activists as a group that I donât personally agree with.
I think the Wesleyans should come up with more original names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesleyan_University_(disambiguation)
My D is a tour guide (not at Wes) and she doesnât walk backwards, mainly because she doesnât want to trip. She also says her school doesnât do âprotestsâ-- they hold âvigilsâ or âpanel discussionsâ when there is some topic they donât agree with. lol!
It is difficult not to judge the school by the tour guide, even when I try to tell myself, that this is one kid who may or may not be representative of the student body. Heck - our tour guide at Wes, who didnât walk backwards but did not use a corny saying to explain why, was the complete opposite of the stereotype - he was a cool, cerebral, good-looking, clean cut, jock who had voted no to unisex bathrooms on his hall freshman year. Not a single mention of sjw issues. But every time we passed the other tour group given by a guy who I swear was wearing womenâs shoes, he could be heard uttering words like ânon-binaryâ, âgender neutralâ, progressive etc. I have a feeling that the 2 tours were vastly different!
The first sentence out of my tour guideâs mouth at Hampshire was an apology for how able-ist the campus is. I loved it because Hampshire knows exactly who they are and what theyâre doing, and they want everybody to know about it. I like schools that have a clear flavor, whether itâs a flavor I would choose or not. This applies to Hampshire, Wesleyan, Reed, Smith, etc. as well as to Ole Miss (one of my favorite schools I have ever visited, though I would never attend).
My D14 had a poor African American girl attend her boarding school on full scholarship. She enrolled in Wesleyan and promptly had a FB status that read âI feel so much better since getting rid of 75% of my hair and my white friends.â This girl was class president at her high school and well loved, very popular. Needless to say it was not received well by her classmates and former teachers.
The girl that caused all the issues at Lâville also went on to Wes.
That school just courts loud mouth, ill informed idiots who happen to have high GPAs. Here in CT no one thinks about the school really. Yale, UCONN, and QU are much more prevalent and respected.
The president of Wes (who I hear is a really good guy) just came out saying that Wesleyan had to make an effort to make sure a diversity of opinion would be represented in future classes, he was referencing conservative opinion.
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Columbia UniversityâŠI thought I would ED there and I ended up taking it off of my list altogether. It may be because I had such an awful tour guide though.
Funny how perceptions differâ which is, of course, the point of this thread! Our tour guide also said the line about walking forward because Wesleyan is a forward-looking school, and I absolutely loved that line!!! I thought it was a safer practice than walking backwards, and I thought it was a cute (and positive) way of connecting the safety practice to the general progressiveness of Wesleyan, one of the nationâs most progressive colleges. Its quirky, liberal nature is a major attraction of Wesleyan- or not, if you feel differently. There is the âfitâ!
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It is funny, the one kid in my daughterâs hs class with purple hair went to Wes. While there she resumed its natural brown color. We figured she was trying to stand out at both places.
Hmmm. Interesting sub-thread given todayâs date in history. :-?
Tufts. My alma mater. Had not been there in a long time, and visited with my son 2 years ago. Perhaps it was the fact we had seen so many other schools before then, starting with Georgetown on a perfect Spring morning, then on to Colgate, Hamilton, Columbia, Dartmouth , Amherst and Wesleyan before getting to Tufts. It was a drizzling and cold April day. Everything looked gray. We saw the cannon . We heard about Jumbo and went to the library steps. The tour guide was fine, but tried too too hard to be " quirky" and funny, and my son gave me rolled eyes surreptitiously quite often . I graduated from Tufts in 1978, and I realized then and there that the impressions and opinions I had of schools, and particularly, the students, were radically out of date. The Tufts students we talked to and met were earnest and nice, but seemed more nerdy than " quirky" and , sorry to say, not as smart as their GPAs and scores would indicate. think they are. Granted, this was a small sampling on one day only. My son got into all the schools I just listed other than Columbia and Dartmouth ( his ED) but not Tufts, so I guess the Admission gods knew something about âfitâ as he loathed the place and had also heard negative things from his school chums back in LA ( " they are weird mom, I swear that is what Samâs brother who is there says!).
He ended going to Emory, which he chose on his own after a lifetime of hearing from me how the only place to study is in a small liberal arts college in New England ( we live in Southern California) . He positively LOVES Emory on every level- socially, academically, and especially the fact it is in a major city ( ok kind of the suburbs , but still not remote like Dartmouth or Amherst etc) as well as the racial diversity and the music scene in Atlanta. He is working hard and getting all As ( bragging mom, sorry) but has real balance in his life and loves the Emory kids.
âMy son got into all the schools I just listed other than Columbia and Dartmouth ( his ED) but not Tufts, so I guess the Admission gods knew something about âfitâ as he loathed the placeâ
Why did he bother applying then? Just to see if he could get in?
I really think there should be an app limit (or increased costs for more than 8-10 apps) because this year, more than others, Iâve seen so many 12-20 applications on this site and the going advice is âyou should have applied to more!â. Which feeds the acceptance rate and disappoinment. Ugh.
@suzyQ7 A-freaking-men
The schools should be aware of how many youâre applying to.
Amherst is not remote
Ummm⊠he applied to 10 schools, which was pretty much the usual number recommended by guidance counselors at his school in Los Angeles other than someone who has been admitted ED , a recruited athlete or similar situation, no one I know applied to fewer than 8, and usually far more schools. Given the crazy reality today of admissions, there was a chance that he might not have been admitted anywhere but Tufts. (He was a legacy, which obviously did not count at all in his case, as I suspect the admissions people might have seen his lack of interest in the " Why Tufts" essay I was not privy to !! LOL!) " Loathed" is perhaps too strong of a word. Did not really like is more accurate.