Wheaton College
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Wheaton College - Comments and Student Experiences | |||||||||||||||||||
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Racial diversity is pretty low but there are lots of different personalities and backgrounds, so you will find some friends who are like you and some who aren't. It's nice that most people are from around the country & world so there's not a big go-home-for-the-weekend crowd. Most everybody is intelligent and talented (and consider themselves so).
Faculty, like anywere, is mixed, but i found most of them to be interested in teaching and most care about their students' success. The bad profs didn't usually weren't ornery or absorbed in research, they just didn't either know the material or know how to teach it. At any college it's important to remember that your education is what you make of it; don't expect to just follow the coursework and have opportunity handed to you.
Music program is excellent for a school of its type, but again your success is largely dependent on you taking advantage of Chicago's cultural offerings. Lots of graduates who go to grad school complain about having to take remedial courses in theory, but the music history classes and a lot of the private lesson teachers are excellent.
Financial aid, at least for me, was terrible. I had the president's scholarship, which at most schools equals somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 tuition... $1000 here, which is a drop in the $23,000 bucket. They also get a lot of national merit scholars, which (I hear) doesn't get you that much money either. A relatively small endowment is the excuse that we who don't get $$ usually hear.
Food is great, gets old but where doesn't it?BEWARE PUBLIC SAFETY. Wheaton is a super-safe campus so they have nothing to do but issue parking tickets, and they have a really arrogant attitude toward students (faculty get away with parking anywhere, including "30 minute student parking only"). FOLLOW PARKING REGULATIONS to the letter.
Though the coursework is often academically rigorous, and critical thinking and writing are nurtured, there are nevertheless serious shortcomings in a Wheaton College education. It's important to remember that you go to a college or university to get a good education; you want to be taught and have your thinking challenged by the best professors and peers possible. Whether these teachers and your fellow students are the same religion as you has no bearing on this whatsoever. In fact, the opposite the case: meeting, befriending and egaging people outside your own cultural and religious sphere is an essential part of your education. This is entirely absent at Wheaton. In fact, I suspect it's become worse since I've graduated.
An earlier reviewer mentioned the Religious Studies Department (called, at Wheaton, something like Bible/Theology), and since that was my major and I'm still in the field, I should say that many of the professors hired to teach in that department are there because of their conformity to the religious beliefs of the college, not because of any contribution they've made to the academic study of religion. They may be nice, and friendly and pious but they will not necessarily teach you the transferable skill of critical thinking that you'll need in the world. I suppose I should also caution those who may misunderstand the use of the adjective "Christian" when used by many "Christian" Colleges to describe themselves. These groups are using "Christian" not according to its dictionary definition, but in a very sectarian sense. They mean "Christian"s like them, excluding the vast majority of Christianity which would be considered apostate or not "really" Christian. (Notice that Holy Cross, or St Olaf, or Notre Dame don't call themselves "Christian" colleges, though using a normal definition of the term they certainly are.) This is something I didn't realize when I was 17 and now wish I had. Besides, you'll be able to practise your religion, as you see fit, at *any* university in the Western hemisphere or Europe. There's no need to go to a (radically) confessional school - go where you will get a good education. This is advice that I received when I was 17 - regrettably I didn't understand it and therefore didn't heed it.
Apart from the academic and religious, it should also be noted (as earlier reviewers have said) that there are real social problems at Wheaton College. It's not a matter of it being "boring" - I had a lot of fun with my friends. The problem is that it's extremely socially repressive and unhealthily so. If students bring childish, psychologcially unhealthy constructs of gender relations, life, privacy, etc. to the college, it should be the task of the educators to help the students grow into adult ways of thinking and functioning. For the most part, however, these constructs are *fortified* in the Wheaton College community - not just among students, but also by administrators, staff and some faculty. Four years is a *long* time to endure such an environment. If you value your psychological health - you should look elsewhere (and probably not at another "Christian" college).
With regard to your future career - there are two problems you'll face as a Wheaton College graduate: either people won't know about Wheaton, or they will. When you tell someone that you went to Brown or Northwestern University, or Oberlin or Carleton College, the first thing they'll think is "wow, you must have a great education". When you tell someone that you went to Wheaton, the first thing they'll think (whether it's true or not) is "wow, you must be a fundamentalist". That is not the kind of first impression you want to give as you're entering professional life - and even later in life, no matter what you do, it stays on your c.v. This can (and does) present genuine problems.Overall, the reasons people tend to go to Wheaton are not the right reasons for choosing a university - and the drawbacks (academic, social, psychological, professional) are difficult to overestimate.
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