Ohio Wesleyan University

Date: Feb 24 2005
Major: Economics (This Major's Salary over time)
I graduated a few years ago from Ohio Wesleyan. I noticed a warning below from an OWU student about

the trick that OWU uses with current freshmen

First, merit aid is unusual in selective schools. So, it is something that you don't even get at some of the private liberal arts colleges in New England. I think OWU is not like that simply because its institutional priorities are different and because its emphasis on financial aid is stronger than at the other schools. Rest assured, I am not naive about it. I do honestly believe that that's the case at OWU simply because a lot of money that gets used for research in other schools is used for financial aid at OWU. Truth be told, teaching is the main priority of professors at OWU, not research. There are a few well-known names, but for the most part, professors there are great teachers, not outstanding researchers.

Now, to address the warning: if you are planning on being mediocre from the start, then yes, Ohio Wesleyan is not the best place for you. 3.5 is a perfectly legitimate hurdle for students who want to say that they excel in their fields. In fact, in many cases (read in many fields), it is a rather low number to even be considered for acceptance in an excellent graduate school program.

I personally agree that it is more difficult in some subjects to obtain this GPA, but this kind "what if I fail?" mindset will be problemmatic for many reasons for one if one plans to start with that mentality and wants to be a successful graduate student anywhere.

On the financial aid issue, I can not stress the importance of having a STRONG incentive for students to study and be what OWU thought they were when they were given merit aid. It is only meant to prevent what some people call "moral hazard". On the opposite side of the case that you use, what if you have a 4.0 HS GPA student who gets a full-ride at OWU and then gets a 2.5 GPA in a physical education major at Wesleyan? Is it fair to other students? For someone who has a 3.3 HS GPA, does not obtain merit aid from Wesleyan, but then becomes a 4.0 GPA undergraduate student in Mathematics at OWU?

The bottomline is: there is a price one has to pay for getting huge scholarships and one needs to make sure that he/she maintains the standards under which the decision for such aid was made.

Of course, all of this is my own thinking and reflects my own thoughts on the merit aid at Wesleyan. I, myself was a Trustee scholar there in Mathematics, perhaps one of the toughest majors at OWU gradewise (obviously universally subjectwise as well)…I have no idea, although I can surmise, what the OWU administration thinks about it.