One Mused

I was actually really sad to read these posts.  I was in a similar situation when I was at Wellesley, as were a lot of the people I knew there.  I had never left the continental US until after I graduated, and my parents found themselves unemployed while I was at school and we scrambled to find ways to cover what Wellesley did not.  Luckily, their situation improved by the end and my loans were completely managable.  I worked very hard to keep myself employed while I was at Wellesley, and ended up working off-campus for most of my years there.  I rarely purchased textbooks because of the expense, but if it was something I felt I needed, I bought an older edition on abebooks for $1-5 (Seriously, check it out- they have some amazing deals- you have to figure out which pages line up with the current edition, but it’s totally doable).  The library also has copies of all of them on hold, which you are welcome to use (or they did as of 2008).

I really honestly believe that Wellesley had a smattering of students across economic classes, and I know that it has a reputation for being otherwise, but I never believed that it was true.  I would say that 90% of my friends worked while they were there and were on financial aid (I even knew two people who were lucky enough to get full coverage of tuition and room and board due to their financial situation), and I feel like Wellesley did a pretty good job, all things considered, of covering a lot for the rest of us as well.  If you are wondering who else is not from the highest economic class, you can look for those gray metal trashcans that the finaid office gives out to the people who qualified.  You’ll see a lot of them.  (I am assuming they still do this.  I graduated in 2008, which wasn’t THAT long ago.)

I am not trying to belittle your experience at all, but rather to let you know that you really are not alone and hopefully provide some comfort.  I hope that with time, you’ll find that there is a greater variety in socioeconomic classes at Swells, and that I am not just making this up.  If things have really changed, then I am sorry to hear that and I would find that very disappointing.  If you want other tips like for the textbooks, let me know and I can try to help you out with those sorts of things.  I would imagine you could ask classmates or profs for advice too (I learned about abebooks from a prof at Wellesley actually, and it saved me sooo much money).  Best of luck!

wellesleyunderground:

I just wanted to come on here and thank Emily for writing that piece about her experience with classism at Wellesley. I actually started crying while reading it because never before has someone put into the words some of the frustrations I’ve had since coming to Wellesley.

I’d also like to bring…