Guess how much money Wesleyan received between 1999 and 2001 from the Feds to fund scientific research? Just guess. $500,000? Not even close. $1 million? Still miles away. $10 million? You’re getting warmer. Try $11.8 million bucks. That’s, like, more than twice Jessica and Nick’s wedding on MTV! Like, oh my God!
Chances are you rarely ever check out Wesleyan’s homepage for the latest news going on here at Camp Cardinal, but if you did, you would see that Wesleyan was recently ranked #1 among the top 20 liberal arts schools for federal funds awarded supporting scientific research. Listed in everyone’s favorite, US News and World Report (#11 my ass), we got the nod for numero uno this time, “barely edging” Wellesley College by a cool $6 mil. Eat it Williams, you guys got third with a lowly $4 million total and, just so you know, Amherst barely made the list with just over $2 mil. Suckers.
No one can ignore the recognition we just picked up. Supposedly it’s because of the fact that undergraduate students conduct research alongside professors and not just graduate students (like at most schools) that is one of the biggest differences between us and the rest of the competition. I say it’s the chic black bathrooms and dingy, cramped offices and labs of Hall-Atwater that set us apart. Tomato, tomaaaahto.
For any of you planning on going to med school anytime soon (you know who you are), you are now free to breathe a little easier. According to the stats (some of which were used for the ratings), 91 percent of Wesleyan grads with a GPA of at least 3.44 who applied for the fall of 2003 were accepted. Also of note is that more than 60 Wesleyan students authored or co-authored published scientific papers between 2002 and 2003. One more thing: Wesleyan ranks second in the nation among liberal arts institutions in numbers of students going on to earn doctoral degrees in scientific fields.
Once again I am shamelessly promoting the science departments here at Wesleyan even though I am a psychology major. There is nothing wrong with not knowing what an amino acid is or how hot the sun is, but it’s important that the people who do understand that stuff get their due time on the red carpet.
If at this point you feel ashamed of having no idea about anything going on in the science world today (or yesterday), here you go: when find yourself yearning for a good book to read that’s not another legal thriller or cheesy Harlequin romance novel, try Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything.” Usually focusing on travel commentary or national satire (he wrote a great book about traveling in Europe for anyone planning on going abroad), Bryson chooses to change it up for an extensive project he undertook when he realized he didn’t know what a proton was. In the introduction he writes, “The idea was to see if it isn’t possible to understand and appreciate—even marvel at, enjoy even—the wonder and accomplishment of science at a level that isn’t too technical or demanding, but isn’t entirely superficial either.”
Subjects such as quantum physics, astronomy and molecular biology are simmered down to the nitty-gritty so that you can actually understand what the terminology and other content means. I’m not saying this book is a New York Times bestseller, but for any of you who wish you knew what the big bang really was or the chemistry behind Old Faithful, this is the book for you.
Okay, enough of that- the book was just something I wanted to throw in there. As for the future, next time I will have another interview with a resident professor regarding their research and how important it is to Wesleyan and the science world in general. For now, I just hope that everyone realizes how great it is that we received the distinction we did. Despite what we think about this school and how great we are, it’s not every day that we are ranked number one in the country for something.
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