In reflecting on our final editor’s corner, your very own Editors-in-Chief started thinking back on our four years at Wellesley — all we did and didn’t do, and the path that led us here. We also considered the question that several College surveys have asked us some version of throughout our time here: would we do it all again, and if so, what would we do differently? 

The question “Would I do it again?” is unfortunately moot. Fun fact: you can only actually do undergrad once. The closest non-pointless hypothetical is: would I want my daughter (non-cis male child) to attend Wellesley?

This question feels especially apropos because we are both, as many Wellesley applicants have proudly confessed in a Wellesley 100 essay about number 99: “Our Almnae,” legacy students.

Legacy admissions, as we will discuss later, are a complicated topic. In a 2023 interview with Dean of Admission and Financial Aid T. Peaches Valdes for the Wellesley magazine after the Supreme Court ruling overturning Affirmative Action, Valdes said that this number was six percent in the 2023-24 year. While Wellesley states that legacy admits aren’t among the official data that colleges track, for the College, the number of legacy students (students whose mother or grandmother went to Wellesley) enrolled is approximately five to seven percent overall. And while Valdes noted that Wellesley legacy applicants go through the same review process as every other student, legacy admissions remain a complicated part of the admissions landscape. 

Still, growing up with mothers who graduated from Wellesley, the College wasn’t simply a college but an otherworldly experience, a place set apart from the rest of the world. A place as unique as this one comes with expectations about the College that have shaped our own experiences here. So, as we round out our own chapters at Wellesley, how do we look at it now? And would we want our own daughters to attend the College?

Rebecca: 

In a post-affirmative action college landscape, where race can no longer be considered in admissions under (if you believe SCOTUS) the banner of fairness and supposed “true” meritocracy, there is something insidiously corrupt about the fact that legacy status remains a factor at so many colleges and universities. The contradiction feels especially glaring at elite PWIs like Wellesley, whose doors have always been open for white and wealthy students. 

My critique of legacy admissions is also, inevitably, a critique of the story that helped bring me to Wellesley. My mother went here. And long before I took the SAT or understood acceptance rates, by the cubbies in my kindergarten classroom, I told people I wanted to go to Wellesley. Wellesley existed in my imagination as a place more akin to a mythical land from a fairytale than to a school. It was a place attached to my mother’s stories, to the person I understood her to be. My mom and her Wellesley friends, most of whom met through being randomly placed on the same hall, were everything I dreamed of being: strong, brilliant, successful and endlessly joyful. I understood very early what anyone who has gotten to know an alum eventually learns – Wellesley has a way of producing remarkable individuals. I realized it was not by sheer coincidence, and thus I wanted in.

But, two things can be true at once. It can be true that legacy admissions are morally indefensible as they unfairly privilege those who come from already privileged backgrounds. But it can also be true that my mother’s Wellesley story matters deeply to me. It can be true that I benefited from a relationship to this institution that I myself did not build. It can also be true that I came here and created a Wellesley story of my own.

This tension has followed me through my four years here. I have loved Wellesley. I have also been furious with Wellesley. I have felt profoundly inspired by this place, and I have felt completely exhausted by it. I have met people – students and professors – who have altered the trajectory of my life. I have also watched this institution fail those very same people it claims to care about. I have professed my pride for Wellesley, and, thanks to The Wellesley News, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to publicly condemn aspects of this institution. I have written over a hundred articles, from op-eds and editorials to satire, and the majority of them have been critical of Wellesley in some way or another.

Maybe that is what really loving an institution looks like. Not defending it reflexively, but never ceasing to ask it to become better. So when asked, “if I had one, would I send my daughter here,” the question is not if I think Wellesley is perfect. It is not. It’s a question of whether this place gave me something rare enough and formative enough that I would want someone I love to have the chance to experience it too.

Yes, I would want my child to know what it feels like to exist on a campus and in classrooms where she is, on a foundational level, more than just a subject of the patriarchy. For my mother, Wellesley offered something that was still novel: a world where every student leader, every role model, every example and authority figure was a woman. It made her believe she could do anything. In ways I did not fully understand until I came here myself, it had the same effect on me. Not to sound all second-wave here, but there truly is something magical about learning and growing in a place built around our liberation, intellectual ambition and empowerment. I’d want my daughter to experience all the beautifully strange quirks of a Wellesley education. The lake walk she’d promise to do but never get around to, the whimsical traditions that are sincere in their absurdity, the friendships that make you more you, the classes that make the world feel legible. I’d want her unbridled curiosity taken seriously. I’d want her to meet the people who are interesting and unique enough to choose this atypical college experience.

But I would not want her to inherit Wellesley uncritically. I’d not want her to believe that prestige is the same thing as credibility, or that tradition is always just. She should not confuse being chosen by this institution for being valued by it. I would want her to come here only if she was willing to challenge it, to take what it offers while still asking what it owes. If she could better herself and this place at the same time. In following my mother’s path, each step has grounded me in my obligation to pave the way for future generations of Wellesley sibs. It is a privilege to inherit the responsibility not to be ministered unto, and it is our duty to minister. 

Wellesley is so many things: beautiful, exhausting, liberating, insular, occasionally ridiculous and often extraordinary. It gave me the vocabulary to describe things about the world and myself that I had only felt. It gave me people I cannot imagine not knowing. It gave me a version of myself I did not know I was capable of becoming. I can only hope that should I have a daughter, Wellesley could offer her that and more. And I hope she would earn her place here, and offer something in return.

Galeta: 

As the daughter of an alum, I heard almost constantly about the wonderful place Wellesley was. Even the “Schneider special,” pita bread with tomato and cheese all heated up under the Schneider Center broiler (this was when it was the student center), became a romanticized delicacy. 

From a very young age, I saw myself at Wellesley, only partially because my mom and her best friend, who she met in her first week of her first year, have been not-so-subtly planting the idea in my head since I can remember. 

The Wellesley alums I know have always been everything I wanted to be. In many ways, they are (to use an outdated, limiting term) “Wellesley women.” They are astoundingly smart, driven people who have never felt like they didn’t belong in a room, no matter how many cis men are in it. They are also people who credit Wellesley College with making them who they are today. So, of course, I was drawn to this magical place that made so many of my favorite people. 

In many ways, I feel my mom’s Wellesley everywhere. I still eat bowls upon bowls of Lucky Charms. My room in Claflin is down the hall from where hers was. The people I’ve met at Wellesley are still brilliant, funny, compassionate, interesting and interested. The Claflin common room still has its “Alice in Wonderland” figures on the wall. The administration is still frustrating. 

Still, as I look at the Wellesley of my four years, it can feel like looking at two Wellesleys. As the College changes, amidst the stresses of daily life, it can feel like pieces of a golden age of Wellesley are being removed. Despite the College’s incredibly reasonable decision to demolish Simpson West, the old infirmary, when you get my mom and her friends in a room and hear, through raucous laughter, stories of living in Simpson West with only eight people in the whole building and no res staff, the loss of the dilapidated building suddenly feels like a symbol of a carefree Wellesley lost to a bygone era.

Wellesley can be a hard place to be. But the wonder of Wellesley is that it remains a miraculous place. The most obvious reason to want a Wellesley experience is one that Rebecca has already noted. Despite its cons, Wellesley presents one irreplaceable pro: a space that remains a refuge from the patriarchal world we still inhabit. It is life-changing to exist in that space. 

How this happens at the College, of course, evolves. Wellesley’s student body is full of students of every gender identity, and the very terms that the College uses to describe its mission are limiting and fail to recognize the realities of who makes up the community they serve. Still, Wellesley’s foundation of resistance is visible in everything about this place, and the College does, still, make so many of my favorite people. 

As I leave the College, I also leave the News, and it wouldn’t feel right to leave without saying a proper goodbye. I’ve had the News to thank for many of the best parts of my Wellesley experience. In my first year, I interviewed a philosophy professor who showed me everything a Wellesley philosophy education could be before I had taken my first of many classes in the philosophy department. At the News, I’ve also gotten to know students who preach and practice some of the most important things at Wellesley — thinking critically about our institution, being involved in what’s going on on campus and telling the stories that matter. For me, the News has come to represent the best of Wellesley education. 

My own love letter to Wellesley one day will include the hours Rebecca and I spent in a makeshift newsroom in Sci, revising last-minute Editor’s Corners on the night of production. It will include Marathon Mondays that were made immeasurably better because my best friend forced us to get to the barricade by 9:30 a.m. so we could get the best spots. It will include the two Chaucer classes I took with the brilliant Professor Kathryn Lynch, and possibly a recitation of the first four lines of The Canterbury Tales. It will include the Philosophy Lounge, and the philosophy and English professors who have changed my life and the way I see the world many times over. It will include the daffodils coming up each spring, and my tiny, tiny junior year shoebox single in Munger (pro tip: when the dorm number has an “A” in it, it’s a tiny room).

No student is blind to the fact that when we leave the College, we are reentering a world in which we are made subject to the patriarchal powers that be. Still, we are able to spend four years focused on our own learning and becoming, preparing to change that world when we return to it. Wellesley is a place that changes people, and a living, breathing place that also changes, miraculously, with and because of its people. And thus, it’s a place I would choose for my daughter.