Washington University in St. Louis Visit Report by applicannot

Visit Activities:

Admissions Interview: Yes - My interview was very formal: me vs. three interviewers! I don't think it went well. I wish you better luck.

Information Session: Yes - A professor, an admissions director, and a current student gave the information session. It was lively (no Power Point), but nothing you couldn't read in a prospective guide.

Campus Tour: Yes - Okay, this is a huge campus. Prepare to walk! My tour only had four people, which was awesome. Tour guides with large groups have microphones. He knew his stuff but was pretty bland.

Classroom Visit: Yes - There is one large lecture hall (250), a couple of smaller lecture halls (100), and hundreds of tiny classrooms - like, classrooms smaller than my high school classrooms.

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Campus:

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Everyone we talked to was pretty friendly, and most of them were excited to have "pre-frosh" (a bit of a misnomer, technically) on campus. But no one was stunningly out of the ordinarily fr

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The admissions department has way too much fun! They were awesome. We met a few faculty members who were awesome, like the Arabic teacher who involved the prospective students in his class.

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The campus is beautiful. It's beautiful in an impressive kind of way, though the buildings are a bit uniform. The campus was well-taken care of with lots of sitting areas and lots of shady tree

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Wow. Everything looked brand new. You couldn't tell the difference between new buildings and the original buildings. Nothing needed repair. The grounds were spotless.

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Is WashU on the list of "Dorms Like Palaces"? It should be. I only saw modern dorms but the traditional dorms have perks of their own. The rooms are all pretty sizable - some of the large

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Blue lights and campus police, etc.. Walking around campus after dark, I felt safe with a group of people and campus was active. The interior of campus is isolated, but there are dark spots outside.

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I was really amazed. WashU is the only school so far that has looked exactly like - actually better - its propaganda mail. The campus is vibrant, impressive, and gigantic.

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Off-Campus:

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I didn't actually go off campus, but WashU is surrounded on three sides by residential areas and then by Forest Park - bigger than Central Park with tons of free stuff. Then there's The Lo

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I didn't go into the city, but there are two metro stops on campus (plus bus stops). All city transportation is free as a student. St. Louis isn't the best college town, but it's not

Campus Visit Notes for Washington University in St. Louis

Visit Description:

Well, I was on campus for Discovery Weekend. They took such good care of us. First of all, they picked us up from the airport. When we arrived at the initial meeting room, we stowed our luggage. It was rainy, so they had umbrellas and ponchos for us (thankfully by the time I arrived, the rain had pretty much stopped, but it was supposed to rain all weekend). We had snacks, picked up our folders with our information for the weekend, and had a quick ten minute orientation to the program. Then we were basically put on our way. I'm just going to go through, mostly chronologically, what I did.

I walked back to my host's dorm to stow my luggage. The South 40 is excellent. It's the freshman/sophomore residential area on campus. My host was in Dauten, a dorm in the JKL residential community. She was a sophomore with a suite literally bigger than my house (okay, I live in a really small house). It had a common room, two doubles, two singles, a balcony (!!), and a bathroom (with two sinks, a toilet stall, and a shower stall with a changing room so you could shower or go to the bathroom while others were at the sink). I also visited a room in Lien and a room in Umrath. Both were "Jack and Jill" style co-ed floors with single sex "suites" (two doubles connected by a semi-private bathrooms). I would consider those rooms slightly larger than average, but very cozy. Despite the suite setup, I got the feeling that the halls were a very active community. There were also quiet study rooms, lounges (which are unreal - you really have to see them), and a kitchen. There are modern (suite style) dorms and traditional (communal bathroom style) dorms. Traditional dorms have their own perks, like awesome mattresses. All of the traditional dorms will either be refurbished or made into modern dorms by I think 2010, so my year.

Then we ate at a dining hall. The dining hall on the South 40 (well, one of them - the Grill) is actually super tiny right now because of the construction. The Bear Mart (a convenience store) and the other dining area, as well as the South 40 gym (the estrogym), are all stunted right now because they are being expanded by the construction. The construction is supposed to be finished by 2010. The food was excellent at every place I dined, but I got the feeling that there weren't a lot of options. It isn't really cafeteria/buffet style anywhere, although the Danforth University Center does have stations (but it's basically make or order your own food, so not buffet style at all...). So while the food was good, I imagine it gets old pretty quickly. This wasn't a problem for me, personally, since I tend to eat the same ten or so meals over and over again without complaint.

After that we had some Discovery Weekend activities, like a getting to know you session, dinner, a performance, and an ice cream social. The performance was a motley show given by some of the performing student groups on campus. A Capella is very popular, with some dozen groups. I thought they were all very good (we didn't see all ten but we did see like five), but I think some thought some groups were better than others. We awesome saw an improv comedy group, a juggling team (cooler than it sounds, I'm sure - very fun to watch), the beat poetry/spoken word group WUSlam, the salsa team WUSauce, and a few others. I was impressed by the quality of the performances and the dedication of the members of each group. One thing I've learned about WashU students is that they're passionate. Everyone's involved in something, and no matter what it is, they are dedicated to it. Most students I met were involved in three or four groups, sometimes similar groups and sometimes opposite ends of the spectrum. But WashU students definitely take their extracurriculars seriously, and they are a huge part of campus life.

There seemed to be a lot of partying going on Friday and Saturday night... maybe more than I would have liked to see (not being a drinker). There was other stuff going on, though, like a poetry slam and a few other activities I saw students filtering from but that I couldn't identify. WUSTL is a school that balances work and play. I found that in a lot of cases, work and play actually intermingled - like when I visited the dining hall. Many of the students I spoke to mentioned that they almost never studied alone. They liked studying in a group because it was both more effective and less efficient (i.e., it was more fun). Lots of kids were talking about serious stuff, some intellectual and others just current events or their classes. That's my kind of a conversation, so you'll be disappointed that I didn't overhear anyone talking about Britney Spears or beer pong... but I'm sure there were those people, as well.

On Friday I visited a class, Beginning Arabic 1. There were fourteen students in the class and nine visitors! The professor was really cool with it though. He was a pretty laid back guy, but I got the idea that he and the class were very demanding. We paired up with a current student and they had twelve minutes to teach us something about Arabic, and then after we presented what we had learned, they had a discussion and learning and teaching Arabic and other languages. They "read" the newspaper (they picked out words that they knew) and went over their homework. Language classes at the first and second level have class four or five times a week, so it's not like they had to cover a lot of material in one class - but it did look like they had intense homework. This is pretty standard fare for a language class, especially a tough non-cognate language like Arabic or Chinese.

I went on a campus tour after that. I had a tiny group of only four people. I just want to tell you that pictures of the campus don't really do it justice. The campus itself is impressive - the buildings are all pretty big and most of them are the same architectural style and/or are made of the same color of brick (this orange-y color that permeates the South 40 as well). There are lots of trees, green spaces, walkways, alcoves, patios, etc. It has all the standard aspects of a college, like classroom buildings (LOTS of them because there are only a few lecture halls, so there are lots of tiny classrooms), a pretty intense athletic complex, fields for varsity sports and intramural sports, a student center, a performing center, a campus bookstore (and a memorabilia store on the South 40 called Bear Necessities), etc. You should look up pictures on Facebook, or better yet, actually visit.

I had lunch at the DUC, or Danforth University Center. It's just a big building with a dining hall, meeting rooms, offices for student organizations, lounges, a video game lounge, etc. The DUC's dining hall has stations. I went to the Mexican food station, but there was also a place for Chinese food, American food, comfort food, vegan food, and maybe a few others. It was mostly "you choose it, they make it in front of you" style as opposed to buffet style. It was incredibly busy but the stations were fairly efficient. Since it is on main campus instead of the residential campuses (which I would like to say are not SEPARATE from main campus, it's just that the campus is so big that it seems like they are separate since it takes so long to walk from place to place due to the sheer size of the campus) it is really only open for lunch and early dinner. Ursa's, on the other hand, is a dining hall open only from six pm to like three in the morning, since it's on the South 40. The Village also has a dining hall and it's supposed to be awesome, but I never visited the Village.

After lunch I took a nap in the library. The library has two full underground floors, a bottom floor made up entirely of windows (awesome!), and at least two upper floors. I stopped by the cafe and took a nap there. It looked cozy and very full. There are also secondary libraries, like the East Asian collections and the Law library. There's Holmes Lounge, in a different building, which is a beautifully decorated room with a cafe that's for studying, hanging out, and drinking coffee. It, like the library, is equipped with both tables and lounge chairs. After all that I went to my interview, which could have definitely gone better. After my interview a friend and I hung out on the South 40, which had an event in the Swamp (a grassy area in the middle of the residential buildings; it looks like it is a low lying area hence the term "swamp"). There are hammocks and bikes and little winding paths everywhere. We shopped at the Bear Necessities, which I highly recommend. Like all campus stores it is very pricey, but they had some great stuff that went above and beyond standard college fare. We had discounts, so I managed to save some money and get a sweater at almost a decent price.

After that we had some Discovery Weekend fun activities, so I don't have much else to say. I can say that admissions spent a TON of money on Discovery Weekend and that there were prospective students everywhere. Most current students enjoyed it but I'm sure some were really annoyed. They took such good care of us, giving us 25 (or so) dining points for the weekend, guest cards that would swipe us into most buildings, etc. I wish we could have gone on a tour off campus, like of the Loop and of Forest Park. WashU is a huge, vibrant campus but I get the feeling that students do leave the bubble, and fairly often at that. I like that because I like urban campuses. WashU is definitely NOT an urban campus - it is a traditional campus that is very close to the city. It's very safe, especially because there are only two roads that go through campus. Campus itself does not have any car access, except, well, some cars and university own trucks do drive on the walkways if they have to get somewhere. It's very safe because of this, but you should still be smart about walking around at night.

Okay, wow, this is really long and I'm going to end here. All in all, my visit solidified WashU has my first choice. Not only is the campus itself in wonderful condition with beautiful elements, the classes are small and intense, the students love to work and to play, and everyone is passionate about something. There is really something to be said about WashU. It definitely doesn't deserve the flack it gets here on CC. Visit if you can.

Hotel/Lodging Recommendations or Comments:

I stayed in the dorms, which you should definitely do.

Dining/Restaurant Recommendations or Comments:

Eat at the dining halls. Ursa's is said to be the best, but I liked the Grill.