Cardinals and Bulldogs and Prime, Oh My !

At 6 AM we woke up to a screeching alarm. We all lazily took showers and then hurried downstairs to eat a quick breakfast. We all packed into the Suburban and headed to Middletown, Connecticut for my first glimpse of Wesleyan. 

When we arrived, it was unfortunately raining but for me personally, the rain was not even a factor. The campus was really beautiful. The whole campus was very green with the different trees and plants, I barely saw one patch of brown grass. But besides the beauty of campus, the school's academics were amazing. Wesleyan is a combination of a Liberal Arts college and a Research college. With this in mind, it's bigger than most of the small Liberal Arts schools but smaller than Research colleges. The student to teacher ratio is 9:1 which means most classes are really small which is something that's appealing to me. The school campus is actually pretty diverse, with 37% students being students of color and 15% being first generation college students. 50% of students also study abroad.

During our tour we got to see the art building which was built with the iceberg concept which means most of the building is underground while a small portion is showing. We got to walk through one of the 3 libraries on campus which was very nice with a vast resource of books. Our tour guide, Danny Sullivan, who was computer science and music double major, was very informative and answered a lot of our questions. He felt that a big aspect of the college was how the students were so involved with their own learning. Wesleyan has no core curriculum. This means that its up to the students to take class that best suits their needs. They also offer a University major where you can create your own major. With the vast amount of student actives that happen all school year, Wesleyan is a very active school. After the tour we had a information session with Dave, an Assistant Dean of Admissions. He gave us a lot of factual information about the college admission process, classes, and the complete profile of the environment of the campus. We then sat down for a bite to eat with huge sandwiches from Nardelli's, a very delicious sandwich shop in Connecticut. Chris, the Northern California Wesleyan Representative, joined us and gave us a more personalized opinion of Wesleyan and told us how it compared to other schools. He attended Haverford College when it was still an all boys school. He gave us a lot of information on the school that we hadn't heard. After a tremendous tour and lunch we headed to Yale. 

Theodore Dwight Woolsey
with a Golden "Lucky" Foot. 

Yale is in New Haven, Connecticut and despite the rain, Yale was, of course, a beautiful campus. When we arrived we mistakenly went to the wrong building and had to hurry in the rain to the right place. Luckily we made it in time, early in fact, and after receiving Yale ponchos, were separated into tour groups. Our cohort split up into two separate tour groups. The leader of my tour was Sam Petrie. He is a rising junior and is majoring in Psychology. Although the city was gloom with slight glimpses of sun, the buildings were spectacular. Their sheer size had me mesmerized. But the beauty on the inside as well as out really fascinated me. 

Beinecke Library

Yale has a wide variety of academic choices with a range of 2,000 classes. Yale has core classes that students are required to complete. The campus, like Wesleyan, is diverse with 39% if students being minorities. The tour at Yale was very informative. We got to walk through a couple of libraries and learn about how housing works on campus (Very much like Harry Potter.) We walked all around campus and learned a lot of interesting facts about Yale. Afterwards we attended an information session with Yale's Assistant Dean of Admissions where all of our questions were answered. We hurried through the rain, back to our car and headed back to Providence.

When we arrived we had 25 minutes to get dressed for dinner at Providence Prime with Yale Alums. The restaurant itself was really nice and the menu had a wide array of options. Once the alums had arrived we all introduced ourselves and told them a little bit more about the Ivy League Connection. I mostly engaged with Chris (Class of  2011) and John (Class of 2010). They were very entertaining and gave us a lot of information that we didn't not learn about on the tour. It was great to learn about Yale from the perspective of students who had just recently graduated. For dinner I had Fillet Mignon and Lobster Tail with grilled asparagus. For dessert I shared a House-made Peach Crisp and an Ice Cream Sunday with those around me. 

Today was a busy day packed with tons of information. Tomorrow we are off to Dartmouth and hopefully it won't rain!