How was the finalist weekend

batfan
Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:35:56 +0000

It was fabulous - I agree with basically everything that AsianGinger said.

I was an Honorary Scholars finalist so we had a few “special appointments,” which were one-on-one conversations with professors in our areas of interest, and other special tours depending on the scholarship within the Honorary Scholars, so my schedule was a little different from hers. But I still had time to walk around campus and the loop and do a lot of other things. Still, they kept us busy! I got a reasonable amount of sleep though (6-8 hours depending on the night), while seeing all the things I was interested in.

The food was in fact amazing, and they gave us $15 on a card to use for the meals that weren’t covered (there were only one or two of those) as well. They’ve got a lot of variety on campus - Bears’ Den, for example, has wonderful pastries and sweets. The meals they gave us were delicious, and the formal dinner on Friday night was one of my favorites (three course meal with your interviewers - who are professors on campus). You have opportunities to get to know your interviewers before the actual interview (I had two 30 min ones), and they had such interesting stories to tell.

One of the most striking things about WashU is the friendly atmosphere - it’s easy to say that a place has friendly people, but at WashU, it was noticeably so. The faculty and administration are all wonderfully kind, but you can tell that the student body really cares and wants to be there as well. It’s just a really warm and welcoming environment, and the students who go there really enjoy talking to “prefrosh.” :)

All in all, I had a wonderful weekend (as I’m sure many others did) and I’m so glad I had this opportunity!