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March 2006
Wesleyan University Admissions Interview (cont'd)
How are you considering the new SAT
in the application process? What were the SAT ranges for the students entering this
fall?
We have been pretty proactive about the
fact that we see this year as a transition year. That said,
our requirement, for years, has been to have some kind of
writing assessment [as part of the application] – so the
writing piece of this is not new to us.
We felt we wanted to set our
requirements in such a way that the testing itself would not
trip anyone up. If a student gives us the new SAT results,
then we ask for two SAT subject tests, of the student’s
choice. I am very confident that it will not make a
difference to Wesleyan if a student took the 'wrong' test.
Our median for the last two years for
the combined SAT scores has been exactly the same, which is
1400. But part of our commitment to access
is that we take people with a very broad range of SATs. In
that context, we look at family educational background,
which is a high determinant in terms of SATs – and we're
aware that students with English as a second language, and
our international students, may have some big differences
between their verbal scores and their math scores. So even
though our median is pretty high, we take a pretty broad
range.
What general advice would you give
to students considering applying to Wesleyan?
One of my current little soap boxes is
that, every chance I get when I am talking to kids about how
they are presenting themselves in the application, I caution
them about their level of comfort in electronic media.
I get very worried about how casual
students are in emails. More than 40% of our applications
are sent electronically, and applicants, because they are so
comfortable sitting down in front of a keyboard, maybe spend
a little less time proofing essays that they do on line.
There is sometimes this much more casual, 'dashed-off' kind
of presentation. Students need to schedule enough time to
make sure they can draft that essay. Often, too, those short
answer questions do not have the polish that the long essay
has. I caution students to remember the 'first impression'
rule, and how important it is to still put their best foot
forward.
Is financial aid available for
students who need it? How should students apply for aid?
I am one of the few deans left who has
a completely need-blind admissions process. We have the
luxury of choosing the best applicants by our definition,
regardless of their ability to pay. That is true for
freshman applicants, for transfer applicants, and all the
way through the wait list.
The important thing for students is not
to be cowed by the $44,000 total cost price tag, and to
recognize that we have a need-based financial aid system. We
spend more than $30,000,000 of Wesleyan money a year on
grants and scholarships. It's all to help make up the
difference between what students can afford and the total
cost of education.
Is there anything else you want to
be sure prospective applicants know about Wesleyan?
Wesleyan is tops in science. One of the
things I worry about is that students won’t know that, if
they think liberal arts means just arts and humanities.
The National Science Foundation has
done studies about where they spend money, and, in the last
study they did, the Wesleyan faculty garnered more research
grants than any other faculty in the liberal arts
environment – by a factor of two.
What that translates into is
undergraduate research opportunities, quality of laboratory
equipment, and just top notch science. It’s in an
environment where students have great access to the
resources and to faculty. Sixty percent of our graduating
science majors will have been co-authors of papers and have
presented research with faculty at off-campus
conferences. It is very typical for our science students to
get graduate research degrees, while there are some who will
be pre-med and will go on to medical school. It’s just a
wonderful place to do science.
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