3 Points for Davenport

Today I woke up at 5:55 AM, 5 minutes earlier than I was supposed to, and somehow managed to trudge downstairs by 6:30 for breakfast after taking a shockingly quick (for morning me) shower.  We made it downstairs before the girls yet again (go team Mowgli, yes the guys did vote on our team name, and we’re going with Jungle Book characters since our room is the Rudyard Kipling suite). The girls have been on time with room to spare all 3 times we’ve had to meet in the lobby, but it’s pretty impossible to keep up with people who’ve been raised by wolves their whole lives.  We went to breakfast at the hotel restaurant, Aspire.  After a filling two eggs scrambled, sourdough toast, potatoes and ham, we were headed off to Wesleyan.

After an hour and a half drive, where pretty much all of our cohort was asleep at some point, we were ready to tour. Our tour guide was a rising senior who was majoring in both music and computer sciences, Danny Sullivan.  Danny was really able to emphasize just how active the student body at Wesleyan is,  and the fact that no core curriculum meant students were only taking classes they wanted to take really interested me. We headed over to the Center for the Arts, a seemingly plain assortment of weird, short rectangular buildings. Danny quickly explained that the two stories we saw were only a fraction of the entire buildings, since most of each building was underground, and all the arts buildings were connected by underground tunnels. Another fun fact about the arts buildings is that one of the sides of the buildings used to make the musical note A as an echo. Unfortunately, the building sunk down enough to alter the pitch of the echo, meaning musicians can no longer tune their instruments to a wall.

Wesleyan's baseball field

Danny discussed living at Wesleyan, and how as one goes from year to year the housing gets even better and better, going from a typical dorm freshman year to an actual house with only 3 other seniors for one’s senior year. We checked out the athletic facility and learned about broomball, Danny’s favorite intramural sport, which is basically hockey with shoes instead of skates and brooms instead of sticks, and consists of a lot of falling down. Then we went to the info session, which helped me not only learn more about Wesleyan, but about the college application process as a whole, and which I really appreciated.

Wesleyan's main library

Then it was time for our most anticipated event, Nardelli’s sandwiches. My buffalo chicken sandwich, while messy, was Nardelicious (I’m sorry, I have a pun quota to fill). We got to speak with the Northern California admissions rep, Chris. Chris was really helpful, and I was surprised to hear that despite being such a small, liberal arts oriented school, Wesleyan had a 3 and 2 program where a student could attend Wesleyan for 3 years and then spend 2 years at either Columbia or Caltech and end up with a B.S. from Wesleyan and a Master’s from whichever school they spent 2 years at. After that nice talk with Chris we rushed off to Yale.

Wesleyan had been a bit too small for my liking despite being a great school, so I was really looking forward to seeing Yale, even though it would just make me feel terrible about myself since it’s all but impossible to get in, although I guarantee that I will try, especially after the tour today. Our tour guide, Campbell, one of two girls on the varsity men’s rowing team, yes you read that right, was animated and it was easy to see that she really loved Yale. Hearing about some of the unique aspects of Yale was awesome, the freedom of not having a core curriculum appealed to me, as well as the residential colleges, which were similar to the houses in Hogwarts (that’s actually what Campbell said, I’m not just pulling that out of thin air).

We arrived back at our hotel room at 6:45, and then had to speed change into our dress clothes to meet with Yale alums at Providence Prime. Providence Prime was amazing, but talking to the 4 Yale alums we met with was even better. Getting to learn about all their experiences at Yale was great, from the hidden brain room to a leg breaking through the roof of the green room. I’m really glad I got to have dinner with Nate, Charlotte, John and Chris (John, Chris and Nate all were in Davenport for a residential college, and they may have mentioned once or twice that it was the best residential college), and I can’t wait for Dartmouth tomorrow.