Wellesley is a private women’s college in Massachusetts. The liberal arts school is one of the original Seven Sisters Schools, an informal grouping of prestigious women’s colleges. This suburban school on Lake Waban is committed to female excellence and leadership. They are serious about being women only (trans women are more than welcome) but they have recently made allowances for non-binary people if they are AFAB and are comfortable being in all-women spaces (lots to unpack there, we know). If your application doesn’t state that you “live as a woman and consistently identify as woman,” they may ask for more information in the form of a letter “from a parent, healthcare provider, teacher, or clergy.” With a record number of applicants last year, their acceptance rate was 16%.
The Wellesley supplement only has one question. Unfortunately, it is not a question we like and we call on Wellesley to change it! They ask:
When choosing a college community, you are choosing a place where you believe that you can live, learn, and flourish. Generations of inspiring women have thrived in the Wellesley community, and we want to know what aspects of this community inspire you to consider Wellesley. We know that there are more than 100 reasons to choose Wellesley, but the “Wellesley 100” is a good place to start. Visit The Wellesley 100 and let us know, in two well-developed paragraphs, which two items most attract, inspire, or energize you and why. (Not-so-secret tip: The “why” matters to us.)
In many ways this is a simple, “Why do you want to come here?” essay. The issue with it, however, is you have to couch your reasoning in two of their preselected 100 reasons. Full transparency, many of the 100 reasons are simply unusable. We can’t imagine someone being able to pull this question off writing about “#24, Frankly, the Endowment.” Frankly, with a $2.2 billion endowment, we would think you should have enough to pay someone to write a better question.
The challenge of answering this question is picking the right 2 of the 100 to showcase yourself. Many of the 100 are things that every school has: “52 libraries,” “12 Majors,” “47 Study abroad.” Skip any number that seems like you could get it anywhere. Choosing these doesn’t show an interest in Wellesley specifically, they show an interest in going to a college.
Other minefield picks are things like “60 The Whitin Observatory.” It’s cool to have an Observatory on campus, but unless you plan to study Astronomy you will most likely only go there a couple of times in your college career. Plus it’s just a hard task writing about why a building made you pick a certain college.
We suggest looking through the numbers carefully and finding ones that you can use as jumping-off points to talk about yourself. We recommend picking one academically inclined point and one extracurricularly inclined point. Together you should be trying to hit about 300-400 words. This doesn’t have to be long; it’s 2 paragraphs.
Some of the easiest numbers to choose are the ones that call out a certain class or major if you are interested in that field of study. They don’t have numbers for every major, but they have several academically focused points like “30 Adam Van Arsdale’s forensic anthropology class,” “11 the neuroscience major,” or “29 The English and Creative Writing Department.” Don’t just pick these to pick these, but if you are interested in majoring in a related field, they are a great way to talk about academics.
If they don’t have a specific one that relates to your field of study well, move on to alums. Many of the numbers are alumnae that have done cool things. Finding one that did something related to what you want to do is a great way to talk about your academic interests. For example, if you want to get into STEM, picking “09 Malika Jeffries-EL, doing the hard work,” allows you to talk about her work in chemistry and talk about your interests in their science programs. Try to pick one of their more interesting alums, trust us, unless you have very specific interests, don’t chose Hillary Clinton went here (number 38).
If none of the academic choices fit with what you want to study, you can also chose, “01 the faculty” and research the teachers in your intended major and talk about them and their classes by name. Your academic point, no matter which number you use to bring it up, should mention a major you plan to study (don’t worry, you can always change it later) and a couple of high-level courses or specifics of the curriculum that the major has to offer at Wellesley that interest you.
For the extracurricular choice, you can have a little more fun. The best choices you can make when talking about clubs in these types of essays build on something you already do. For example, if you do service work, finding something that is also serviced based gives you a great opportunity to talk about yourself.
This question makes that a little trickier, but you still should be able to find something that connects to what you already do. If you paint, you can talk about “61 The Jewett Arts Center.” Maybe you do Powwows or do flamenco dancing, you can pick “08 Culture shows.” There are several that have to do with athletics which may be a good choice for those who have played high school sports. Whatever you pick, connect it to an interest or extracurricular that you already do and try to have it be something on campus. Anyone can do “77 the Boston Marathon.” Try to keep your pick campus-specific.
This essay is tricky because if they just asked, “why do you want to go here?” without you having to pick specific numbers from a premade list, they would get better answers. And we know it’s not a big deal, but having them go out of numerical order on the site really irked us while writing this. We know it can be hard to pick numbers out of the line, but just remember if you can center something academic and then something extracurricular on campus and talk about yourself through these, this essay shouldn’t be as hard as it seems. And we will cross our fingers that they change it for next year.
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