Overview
Academic Excellence
The essence of a Wheaton education lies in the close collaborative relationships that develop between students and faculty members. Classes are small. Students know their professors as teachers, advisers, and supervisors of research projects-and often as friends. The student-faculty ratio is 10:1, and the average class size is between 15 and 20, promoting rich intellectual discourse between students and their professors.
Often, students collaborate with faculty members on research projects or artistic endeavors such as gallery exhibitions and theater productions. These collaborations make Wheaton unique among liberal arts institutions and cultivate unique opportunities, such as collaborative undergraduate research and scholarship opportunities.
The Wheaton curriculum emphasizes the breadth and depth of the liberal arts and sciences. The college's unique Connections program allows students to study subjects from multiple academic perspectives, enabling them to see the relationships among seemingly disparate fields. Students enjoy great flexibility in course selection and hone the critical thinking skills that are necessary to succeed in an increasingly complex world.
Wheaton's Filene Center for Academic Advising and Career Services helps students pursue out-of-class learning experiences such as internships, research fellowships, and field experiences. Wheaton invests more than $350,000 annually in stipends supporting students who undertake internships, community service assignments, and research with faculty members. The Center for Global Education provides study-abroad opportunities for a semester, for the year, and over January break in more than fifty countries and develops new initiatives to internationalize the Wheaton campus.
Wheaton College grants the Bachelor of Arts degree. Five-year dual-degree programs are available in engineering, business and management, religion, optometry, integrated marketing, and fine arts with affiliated schools.
Wheaton participates in the Twelve-College Exchange Program, which includes Amherst, Bowdoin, Connecticut College, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Trinity, Wellesley, Wesleyan, and the Williams-Mystic program. Locally, Wheaton students may cross-register for courses at Brown University and other colleges.
Great Location Between Boston and Providence
The 385-acre campus with its eighty-seven buildings is in the suburban surroundings of Norton. Wheaton is the only selective, coed classic liberal arts college in the Boston area, and it is proud to be so close to a city that is such an important cultural, political, intellectual, and economic center. Wheaton is conveniently located between Boston and Providence, providing students with myriad opportunities to pursue intellectual, cultural, and social experiences. The Boston and Providence areas offer diverse resources and institutions that put theory to the test in real-world settings.
Wheaton is located on a classic, brick-and-ivy-covered campus originally designed by the renowned architect Ralph Adams Cram, who also designed Princeton and West Point.
The newest additions to the campus include a $20-million arts complex with a state-of-the-art studio arts building; 100-bed Beard Hall; two 50-person residence halls; a multipurpose athletics facility, which includes a field house, a pool, and a gymnasium; Sidell Baseball Stadium; and a new $50-million, state-of-the-art Center for Scientific Inquiry and Innovation that is currently under construction. Public buses connect the campus to nearby commuter rail stations serving Boston, Providence, and numerous points in between. The College is also situated within an hour's drive of the beautiful beaches of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island. The Comcast Center for Performing Arts is located 2½ miles away.
Championship Students and Athletes
Wheaton's reputation as a leading liberal arts college continues to grow. In the past ten years, more than 100 Wheaton students have won competitive national scholarship awards, including three Rhodes scholarships as well as Truman, Fulbright, Goldwater, and Rotary International scholarships. Wheaton is one of only a handful of liberal arts colleges in the country to have produced 3 Rhodes Scholars in a six-year span since 2001.
The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) ranks Wheaton's athletic program among the top 20 percent in the country. In the last decade, Wheaton teams have garnered eight national championships. Two teams rank in the top twenty nationally. Wheaton has won seventy-seven NEWMAC regular-season and tournament titles. Over a dozen Wheaton athletes have signed professional sports contracts or competed for places on U.S. Olympic teams.
Wheaton does not prescribe rigid entrance requirements. Most entering students have had 4 years each of English, mathematics, and one or two languages; 3 years each of social studies and science; and 2 years of history. However, these guidelines are not to be taken as requirements. Applications are reviewed on an individual basis, and the academic achievement, challenge of the curriculum, evaluations by teachers and counselors, and extracurricular contributions of each candidate are all taken into account.
Though standardized test results are optional, personal interviews are expected for all applicants. Transfer students are admitted to the sophomore and junior classes each year. In addition, a cohort of approximately 50 first year students enters Wheaton in January every year.
Students demonstrating financial need normally receive a combination of grants, loans, and opportunities for employment on campus. Financial aid is awarded independently of the admission decision. Approximately 60 percent of Wheaton's students receive some form of financial aid. Wheaton also recognizes entering freshmen with demonstrated outstanding academic ability, unusual talents, and potential for leadership with renewable merit scholarships of up to $15,000.
