Twins Jesse and Sasha Greenspan ’06 may look identical, but they will quickly have you know that they are very much individuals.
“We did not plan on going to the same college,” Sasha said. Her sister agrees.
“We had been together the past 18 years, so I figured it was time to try life on my own,” Jesse said.
As the fate of college admissions would have it, the two ended up both attending Wesleyan. However, they have done their best to differentiate themselves.
The sisters have different best friends, different interests, and different career paths.
Jesse is a government major and Sasha is Science in Society. This year they happen to both live in Butterfield B, but it was not intentional.
“The riot-proof halls create the illusion of separation,” Jesse said.
They say they even have distinct senses of humor.
“We’re not the kind of twins who always love being twins,” Sasha said.
Jesse agrees.
“We’re not attached at the hip, and, unfortunately, we do not have a psychic connection,” Jesse said.
Both did say that they do find it easier to talk to each other than other people. They just don’t understand why people tend to put twins in a different category than other siblings. Sasha remembers a time when a woman in a grocery store thought they really were two incarnations of the same person.
“She asked us if we had the same first name!” she said.
The two have found competition an issue, both as they have tried to differentiate each other, and the competition imposed on them by their peers.
“When we got tests back [in high school], our friends would ask us what we got, to see who did better,” Sasha said.
While the two intended to part ways for college, Jesse says “college admissions didn’t think I should try that for another four years.”
What to do when twins apply is a real challenge for college admissions officers.
Wesleyan’s Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, Nancy Hargrave Meislahn, says that having two twins apply adds a new dimension to the admissions process.
“This is always a challenge, to balance the importance of reviewing each candidate as an individual with the reality that there is a single family unit, a home into which our admission letters will arrive simultaneously,” Meislahn said.
In such cases, the admissions office runs a so-called “sib and twin check” to be extra sure that they have made an appropriate decision for all involved.
Sometimes the families or applicants themselves will say how they want the decision to be made.
“I remember a letter from a mom a year or two ago that demanded that we consider each of her children separately as if there were unrelated,” she said. “On the flip side of the coin, we’ve also received requests—extra essays or statements, if you will—from both twins to be considered as a unit.”
Todd and Adam Stone ’05 fell into the latter group. The two, both of whom applied early, put special addendums to their applications stating their desire for the school to accept or reject them as a pair.
“We gave the university a sort of ultimatum which we were fearful might turn them off, but it didn’t,” Adam said.
Todd is the features editor for the Argus.
The Stone brothers, prominent twins on campus, are incredibly close. While the Greenspans have attempted to establish individual lives at Wesleyan, Todd and Adam share many friends, live together in a Hi-Rise apartment, share an English major, and have a deep connection to one another.
Prior to going abroad last semester, the two had never been apart more than 10 days.
Adam says that being a twin has added to their popularity on campus.
“Twins always seem to be a kind of spectacle to everyone,” he said. “But, I’d like to think that our individual personalities also contribute.”
The Stone and Greenspan twins are not the only twins attending Wesleyan, Meislahn confirms. One pair declined to be interviewed.
Of course, many twins do separate when they go off to college.
Anna Ross ’06 and her fraternal twin, Carly, decided it was not a big deal whether they went to the same school or not. Carly, a sophomore at Columbia University in New York, applied to only three of the same schools out of a total of roughly 20 each.
“It’s not that difficult to be apart,” Anna said. “I think it’s harder for identical twins who have shared a room their whole lives.”
Anna says that the two were always moderately close growing up, but have actually become closer in college.
As for the Greenspan sisters, they are just glad that they’re no longer as commonly confused for one another.
“People used to wave at me and I would have no idea who they were, so I smiled and tried to look like Sasha,” Jesse said.
Leave a Reply