I think I’ve previously mentioned a little on why I chose to attend Wellesley, but today I want to dedicate an entire post to explaining what led me here. If you’re a prospective student reading, hopefully some of this can resonate with you.
But first, here are some updates: I declared my major and minor! My major and minor plans were approved, so I am now officially an economics major and statistics minor. Scary to say aloud, but I’m glad it’s declared. Last week, I also had my first radio show as a DJ for WZLY, our student radio station. It was super fun; some of my friends and family from home tuned in. I’m trying to stick to a musical theme each show, and I played songs reminiscent of summer for my first show. Listen every Friday 9–10 pm eastern time at wzly.org/listen! In addition to WZLY, I’ve been trying out club water polo. Wellesley has club sports like water polo, rugby, and ultimate frisbee teams that all students can join. I’ve gone to a few practices so far and will write more on it in a later post.
First radio show!
Now back to the big question: why I chose to attend Wellesley College. To be honest, I wasn’t considering Wellesley when I was a high school junior and starting to seriously plan for applying to college. I did know earlier on though that I wanted to attend a smaller college where I could receive personalized attention from professors and know all my peers. I went to a smaller high school, so I knew that this learning style suited me best.
One day towards the end of my junior year, I stumbled upon a YouTube video as I researched colleges. The video was somebody talking about why to attend historically women’s college (or HWCs). Not expecting much, I clicked on the video. I can’t remember all the details of the video, but a specific point that the person made stood out to me: at HWCs, students don’t hesitate to speak up in the classroom and rarely feel like they’re being spoken over. This point really stuck with me because I’ve always struggled with shyness and speaking up in the classroom. So, I kept this note about HWCs with me as I further researched colleges. My family and I already knew of Wellesley because my childhood music teacher attended here. As I looked into HWCs, Wellesley stuck with me the most: Wellesley had excellent academics, traditions, a beautiful campus, and I liked the location on the east coast and distance from Boston, meaning I could always enjoy the campus but also go into the city if I wanted to. Overall, the sense of culture and community seemed very rich at Wellesley and drew me here.
Thus, I applied to Wellesley early decision and was accepted! I visited Wellesley for the first time back in April 2022 and really enjoyed touring the campus with my parents and envisioning my life here. Thinking back to that YouTube video I watched as a high school junior, I definitely agree with those sentiments: the classroom environment is great and relaxed, all my professors have known me by name, classmates typically know each other, my classes have usually been 20 or less students, and the majority of the people I know live on campus for all 4 years.
Thank you for reading!
Inside the DJ’s studio in the WZLY radio station. I don’t know what most of the buttons and dials do.
WZLY Door tag I made, she’s a little ugly, but I love it