Before Wesleyan was founded, a military academy established by Alden Partridge existed, consisting of the campus's North and South Colleges.

[8] Despite its name, Wesleyan was never an officially denominational seminary, though its curriculum and campus religious life were shaped by a heavy Methodist influence.

[15] In 1872, the university became one of the first U.S. colleges to attempt coeducation by admitting a small number of female students,[11] a venture then known as the "Wesleyan Experiment".

[18] Beginning in the late 1950s, president Victor Lloyd Butterfield[19] began a reorganization program that resembled Harvard's house system and Yale's colleges.

[23] Butterfield's successors, Edwin Deacon Etherington (class of 1948)[24] and Colin Goetze Campbell,[25] completed many innovations begun during Butterfield's administration, including the return of women in numbers equal to men;[26] a quadrupling in the total area of building space devoted to laboratory, studio, and performing arts instruction; and a significant rise in racial, ethnic, and religious diversity and total number of students.

These were originally constructed by the City of Middletown for use by Captain Partridge's American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy.

In 1829, after the Connecticut legislature declined it a charter to grant college degrees, Partridge moved his academy to Northfield, Vermont.

[47] In 2008, Vanity Fair said: "This tiny Connecticut University, with a total enrollment of 2,700, has turned out a shockingly disproportionate number of Hollywood movers and shakers.

[50] University students, biographers, media experts, and scholars from around the world may have full access to The Wesleyan Cinema Archives, which document the film industry during the 20th century and contain the personal papers and film related materials of Ingrid Bergman, Frank Capra, Clint Eastwood, Federico Fellini, Elia Kazan, Frank Perry, Roberto Rossellini, Robert Saudek, Martin Scorsese, Gene Tierney, Raoul Walsh, and John Waters, amongst others.

[55] The College of Social Studies (CSS) was founded in 1959, combining the fields of history, economics, government, and philosophy.

Sophomore year focuses on the development of modern Western society from historical, economic, social and political perspectives, and culminates with comprehensive final exams.

[56][57][58] Wesleyan is the sole undergraduate liberal arts college to be designated a Molecular Biophysics Predoctoral Research Training Center by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Spike Tape produces upwards of five plays and musicals a semester, completely run by undergraduate students.

[69] Beginning in 2012, Wesleyan became the first small liberal arts college to partner with a private consortium to design and offer free public access online courses.

[70] Wesleyan teaches online courses in Math, Computer Science, Law, Psychology, and Literature, as well as other subjects.

[75][76] In the 2025 U.S. News & World Report rankings, Wesleyan University is tied for 14th overall among national liberal arts colleges.

[84] The stated purpose of the NBER study was to produce a ranking system that "would be difficult for a college to manipulate" by basing it on the actual demonstrated preferences of highly meritorious students.

[107] Wesleyan is a member of the Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), fielding intercollegiate varsity teams in 29 sports.

[112] With alumni including Bill Belichick, Eric Mangini, and Field Yates, the school has been described by ESPN as a "hotbed for great football minds.

[114] He was a National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) Division III All-American in 1992, four times was named all-New England, and was inducted into the Wesleyan University Hall of Fame.

[115] In February 2011, U.S. News & World Report described the university as one of "20 Colleges Where It's Easiest to Get Involved" with a "Students per Club" ratio of "11.66".

"[121] He "stimulated students to organize opportunity for debate through a House of Commons similar to the one he had started at Johns Hopkins in 1884.

[126] Until 2008, the student body published the Olla Podrida which was originally a quarterly newspaper in the late 1850s, but was the college yearbook since the Civil War.

[127] Wesleying is a student-run weblog that documents undergraduate life at Wesleyan, often receiving up to 10,000 page views a day.

There are at least 13 groups that perform on campus regularly,[135] with others occasionally created and disbanded, including Triple Major, Notably Sharp, The Cardinal Sinners, The Mazeltones, The Mixolydians, and numerous others.

The 1963 comedic novel, Night and Silence Who is Here?, by novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson, is thought by many literary critics to be patterned humorously after Wesleyan's Institute for Advanced Studies (now the Center for the Humanities); the main characters comprise and parallel the cast of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

They include 30 Rock,[153][154] As the World Turns,[155][156] How I Met Your Mother (characters Ted Mosby, Marshall Eriksen, Lily Aldrin),[157][158] Buffy the Vampire Slayer,[159] and The West Wing.

Wesleyan alumni have received external fellowships, including Fulbright, Goldwater, Marshall, Rhodes, Truman, and Watson.

Former faculty and affiliates Richard Wilbur, Mark Strand, and Donald Hall were United States Poets Laureate.

Television notables include writers and co-creators of How I Met Your Mother, Craig Thomas and Carter Bays.