GWU campus that bad?

MommaJ
Thu, 11 Jul 2013 23:17:32 +0000

Well, as noted above, there really is no traditional campus at GW, and it’s not self contained. If you look at a map of the Foggy Bottom (main) campus (here: https://www.gwu.edu/sites/www.gwu.edu/files/downloads/Foggy%20Bottom%20Campus%20Map.pdf) you’ll see that it’s part of the city, not separated. The buildings are all basically together, but they are located on city streets, with the attendant traffic, and intermingled with some non-GW buildings. But it’s a very lovely part of DC, with a Metro stop right there. Not “horrible” at all, but not for everyone. The Mount Vernon campus is more traditional in style (I think it started life as a junior college), but most of your education would be taking place in Foggy Bottom. As for the vibe, I think urban campuses in big cities tend not to have a huge sense of community, since students have the whole city at their disposal for activities and entertainment and don’t need to rely as much on the school and its resources. That’s not to say that you couldn’t build your social life around GW if you chose to. And I think there can be a higher than average level of sophistication (or maybe pseudo-sophistication) among students that choose an urban campus. My S transferred out of GW when he realized he wasn’t happy in an urban environment, and some of the negative elements for him (and this was just a reflection of his personality) were the amount of clubbing and shopping that his fellow students engaged in and the way students tended to disperse over DC on the weekends rather than stick around the school.

If you are interested in the DC area but want a more traditional, contained campus, American University would be ideal. And of course UMD has a very typical large campus and is accessible to DC via the Metro.