This is the official discussion thread for Wheaton College (MA) Class of 2029 applicants. Ask your questions and connect with fellow applicants.
Kid got email around 2p. Hope everyone got good news.
S25 in, with big merit scholarship, honors program, & Balfour scholar status (summer funding). Very excited about this offer!
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Sounds similar to my kid! Really great school and amazing offer. Made the kid so happy especially because his top early action acceptance was not quite as generous as we had hoped! Now they are closer in rank, but will have to see what happens with the 3 super competitive regular decision schools in March. They feel like lottery tickets. Good luck to your kid. How do they feel about it?
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S25 is in with a presidential scholarship, honors program, and Trustees scholar. It is definitely closer to the top of their list now!
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He’s definitely interested. He has another good EA offer but in a faraway state; really nice to have such a generous offer closer to home. Also waiting on some RD lottery tickets.
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D25 accepted with generous merit scholarship. Definitely at the top of her list!
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S25 was accepted with honors, the Balfour Scholar designation, and nice merit aid. It is his first acceptance so he is very excited about it.
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Can someone explain the difference between the scholar designations and what students receive or have access to? I couldn’t find information on the Wheaton site. I see Balfour mentioned, but my son received Trustee Scholar, and I’m not sure how they differ.
I am wondering the same. My son got trustee. From what we can tell it is the money in between sophomore and junior years, but we weren’t sure. And no idea about Balfour, I was wondering the same. Curious what others will say. The merit has pushed Wheaton higher up for my kid. One more reach app to finish up then we wait until March to see if he gets into any of those.
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My son attends and is Balfour, but I have a loose sense that they change the exact meanings/amounts of the scholar designations over time, so I’m not sure his experience applies to what applicants received this year.
I think that in his year, there were differences along the different named scholarships in total amount of scholarship and also in amount of guaranteed summer funding (happy to explain how that piece worked for my son as he did take advantage of it).
Beyond that, in his year, the names of the scholarships didn’t really matter since May Fellows was separate from the scholarships, and anyone can complete the requirements to graduate with honors if they want to…but I think they introduced an honors program/designation at time of acceptance more recently that wasn’t a thing when he applied (not sure if that links only to any particular scholar/scholarship designations).
I can speak a little bit to May Fellows and to the honors pathways if anyone is specifically wondering about those, but I’m sure someone in admissions would be happy to answer other questions (school isn’t back until the week of Jan 20th for Wheaton so might be nobody in the office until first full week of Jan)?
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Hi, I would love to hear about your kid’s experience with honors & May fellows. My kid was accepted with honors/Balfour/$. He is looking for a college with challenging social science classes & classmates who do the reading & are excited to talk about it in class & hoping Wheaton might be a fit.
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Our kids seem similar!
Same! Sounds like all of our kids might get along. 
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My kid’s experience is that he didn’t do them, haha. That said, there are multiple honors pathways with the open curriculum. One is a social justice honors pathway while another is a global honors pathway, and the final is the Eliza Wheaton pathway (basically the equivalent of liberal arts distributive requirements). My kid came close to unintentionally completing the Eliza Wheaton pathway (he just took what he wanted to take and what fit his major and found that he had checked off almost all of the requirements), but he didn’t take any foreign language so he did not complete it.
He has a close friend who is in May Fellows - that strikes me as a good program for someone who wants the additional intellectual stimulation and cohort it provides. My own kid had his hands as full as he wanted them with his standard classes and activities and didn’t seek out more than that. May Fellows are also eligible for living in Beard (a dorm considered relatively nice) starting sophomore year. They aren’t guaranteed to live there, but they can if their housing lottery number is high enough, and they can pull in a roommate for Beard who isn’t in May Fellows. I think some of the official May Fellows events are held in Beard common spaces. My son lived there as a sophomore because his friend pulled him in as a roommate.
I think the open curriculum does help with this - students are usually taking classes they really wanted to take (it’s not 100% true that they are always taking exactly what they wanted to take because majors require certain classes, some of which may not be their favorites - my son likes his major but didn’t like every single requirement of it, for example; or they may have had a hole in their schedule and only certain classes were available to fill that spot - especially when they are first years or sophomores and have less seniority in the class selection process). My son has taken quite a few social science classes as he came close to having minors in Political Science and Sociology, and he has overall liked those very much. He was less a fan of the one business class he took and a music theory class (but those make sense given his preferences). There were classes he was prepared to dislike (Gen Chem, a coding class, etc.) that he ended up thinking were good because he had good professors for them.
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RD results are out! 
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My son committed to Wheaton and we are super excited. Did anyone else?
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