Wesleyan University, located in Middletown, Connecticut, is a private liberal arts university with a little bit of a STEM bent. It’s also an incredibly academic school–several studies from 2008 found that undergraduates from Wesleyan were 2nd in the country for pursuing PhDs among all liberal arts schools. It’s also a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) and competes in D3 sports with Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Tufts, Trinity, and Williams. Approximately 25% of students at Wesleyan play a varsity sport, making it one of the less sporty schools in NESCAC, despite the fact they were an original member of the NCAA.
If you play a niche sport like squash and want to get a top-notch education, you might be interested in what getting recruited to Wesleyan might look like. You might even think your involvement in sport could give you a leg up in the admissions process. It’s not that simple.
Because Wesleyan is a D3 school, this means you’d be at a school where they really put the emphasis on the student part of student-athlete. D3 teams have smaller budgets, shorter seasons, and no athletic scholarships. But, if you think about it, that means you’d be coached by and playing with people who are simply doing it for the love of the game, and we think that’s beautiful. Btw, don’t assume D3 means bad at sports–less than 3% of people who play sports in high school will do so at any level in college. Not many students have the talent to take it to the next level, even if that level is D3. If you have the talent (plus all the other stuff that we’ll get into in a sec), a sport could put you slightly over the edge.
Wesleyan has 14 men’s and 14 women’s sports, including the ol’ standbys like football and basketball and volleyball, but also as we mentioned, squash. Keep in mind that each sport has its own distinct guidelines and regulations for recruiting, including limitations on who can initiate communication through email, calls, or in-person approaches, and limits on when communication can begin during your high school career. Know the regulations for your specific sport, inside and out, register with the NCAA Clearing House, contact the governing body of your sport for guidance, and educate yourself on the relevant regulations.
Okay so you think you have the skillz (yes, with a z) to be a cardinal (that’s their mascot, btw), but could you actually get into Wesleyan? A note from a coach doesn’t change a B average or a middling SAT score. To get recruited, you need to be able to get into Wesleyan on your own. NESCAC schools like Wesleyan emphasize the student part waaaay more than the athlete part:
“All NESCAC member colleges enroll students who will enhance and enjoy the intellectual, social, and extracurricular communities our campuses provide. We seek students who are interested in the wide range of rigorous intellectual experiences offered, and value the role that extra-curricular activities, such as music, debate, theater, political action, and athletics, play on campus.”
As we’ve said before, if you want to play a sport for a liberal arts school, you need to be a liberal arts student. Let’s dive into what you need to have a shot:
Grades
Like a lot of schools these days, Wesleyan does not publish the average GPA of admitted students. However, based on their acceptance rate (14.4%) and average test scores (we’ll get into that in a sec), we can professionally guess (bc we are experts) that you’ll need as close to a 4.0 as possible. A lot of third-party sites estimate it at 3.91, and that’s probably about right. So, moral of the story? Have really good (read: perfect) grades in the hardest classes your school offers.
Scores
Wesleyan ever so kindly publishes their admissions data on their website, so we know that the middle 50 for the class of 2026 was 34-35 on the ACT, 720-770 on SAT Reading and Writing, and 740-790 on SAT Math. We also know that 60% of admitted students submitted test scores and over half of admitted students were admitted in Early Decision. This means in order to be competitive, you need to have near-perfect scores. But that isn’t the entire equation! You also need to have really stellar…
Extracurriculars
Pretty smooth how we transitioned that into the next section, huh?
Anyways, you need to have built a niche by the time you apply. We know you’re busy. Everyone is busy. But you have to prioritize your academic goals when you schedule your extracurriculars. If you know you’re interested in politics, you need to go deeper. You need to have things on your application that prove that interest, like internships or working for a campaign or doing your own grassroots organizing or a summer program or whatever works for you! Then you need to be even more narrow. Just ‘politics’ doesn’t cut it, you need to have a specific thing in mind like “changes to the Overton Window theory.”
A Stellar Essay
You also need to have a very, very good Common App essay. We like essays that are personal, sometimes funny, small stories about things in your life. It could be a weird tradition you have with your friends, your walk to school, the garden you planted, anything. Those essays set you apart from the crowd. Talking about your grandmother does not. Also please do not write about your sport.
And if you’re about to ‘well, actually’ us about supplements, we already know, they don’t have one. But we still say reach out.
Athletic Talent
Putting this one last because it’s the most important one in terms of recruiting. You need to have the talent and the skills to get recruited. Be honest with yourself. If you don’t, then we lovingly suggest not doing that sport anymore and instead using that time to, idk, build a rocket in your backyard or invent a new type of fabric.
Wesleyan is a “Little Ivy” for a reason. It’s a challenging, selective, top-tier college, and their academic standards won’t waver just because you’re pretty good at lacrosse. But, if you think you have what it takes, academically and athletically, then we say go for it.
If you need help strategizing for college admissions, navigating the process, or writing your essays, reach out to us today.