Rigor of Wash U Academics compared to...

Colleges & Universities Washington University in St. Louis
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<p>Hello all,</p>

<p>I am an incoming “freshman” that want to gauge the rigor and difficulty of academics at Wash U compared to a good public LAC that I attended for the past two years. </p>

<p>For my junior and senior years, I took a total of 20 classes as a high school student enrolled full-time at the University of Minnesota Morris (Its called the PSEO program if you are interested). I must admit that college is A LOT tougher than high school (even AP classes) and I had trouble adjusting at first, getting an average of 3.45 GPA for my junior year. However, once I got the hang of it, I got a 3.9 GPA for the two semesters of my senior year. I also pushed myself to take higher level classes like Numerical Methods (A), Discrete Mathematics (A), Calc III (A), Chemistry I and II (B and B-), Differential Equations (A), Linear Algebra (B+), Gen. Physics I (A), some general eds, CS, and stats, etc… </p>

<p>The University of Minnesota Morris is one of the best PUBLIC liberal arts college. Most of the professors have PhDs and a good number of them are from Ivies and other top level universities, so the teaching quality is definitely quite strong. I would say that the classes are definitely more challenging than community college or high school AP classes.</p>

<p>I have also sampled several classes at Wash U during multicultural week, and I can say that the classes moved at a slightly faster speed and covered some topics that were only skimmed over in classes I’ve been in. For example, Wash U Differential Equations covered more Laplace Transforms topics than my class at UMM. Also, at the same time that I was taking Calc III at UMM, Wash U was 3 whole classes ahead of us. </p>

<p>So now that you have some background information, I beseech you to help me with some questions: (I’m an incoming biomed eng. student)</p>

<li><p>For those who are transfers or have had similar experiences as me, how much harder is Wash U compared to your previous college? </p></li>
<li><p>The policy at UMM is 3 hours per credit per week to do well in a class. This translates to 12 hours for a 4 credit course, which is about 12-3=9 hours outside of class per week. I never found myself spending this much time to get a good grade, but I hear that some classes at Wash U requires a tremendous amount of time and I was wondering how many hours per week for a typical 3-4 credit course you would need to get an A?</p></li>
<li><p>I read that Wash U requires that you have a B grade for a college course to transfer it. I want to transfer Chem I, but I feel that since I am going into biomed eng., and that Wash U chem is so tough, that I am thinking of taking it again. Also, I feel that physics is extremely important, so I may want to solidify what I know by taking Honors Physics at Wash U. Also, I’m afraid of skipping phys I and jumping into phys II after I had a summer, a semester, and a winter break to forget phys I. So should I take Chem I and Honors Physics? Or is it OK to get credit and skip them?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks in advance for any replies, and hope to see you at Wash U if you are a student :D.</p>

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<p>If you’ve basically been going to college for the last 2 years, then I don’t think you’ll have any problems at all. I couldn’t take anything past Calc 2 (AP Calculus BC) in high school, and didn’t even have any other math classes available besides AP Statistics. I did have AP Physics B, Biology, and Chemistry, but I’m doing premed, so I have to take those again, so I don’t know how good of an idea it would be to skip them. You’ll probably be fine skipping Physics, but Chem might be a good idea to take again (just looking at your grades).</p>

<p>I guess I’ll be seeing you in BME in 2 months ;/</p>

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<p>Thanks for the reply! I’m leaving my options open for either going the pre-med route or double majoring in biomed eng. and double E. I’ll see ya at orientation and guess who you are, just watch (LOL).</p>

<p>Any current students willing to give me some insight on my questions?</p>

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<p>I transferred to WashU for my sophomore year. Unfortunately I am double majoring in the humanities, so can’t really offer much insight into specifics about the science/math classes. What I can say is that the amount of work I would do at my old school (1st draft of an essay, written the day of) would earn me an A, at WashU would earn me a B, maybe a B+. </p>

<p>Related Anecdote: a grad student at Harvard who TA’d for a friend’s class did his undergrad work at WashU and said he worked 2-3 times harder at WashU than kids at Harvard do.</p>

<p>As for work outside of class? gauge yourself, you should know yourself well enough to be able to figure out based on the material and assignments how much time you need to spend studying. The whole 3 hours per credit thing is what they tell you at EVERY college, don’t really take it seriously.</p>

<p>As for transfer credits? The cluster system at WashU is confusing, but the way they do it is they waive a cluster of classes that you’ve taken at the previous school based on what it is you plan being your major. So since I am majoring in eng. and phil., they took my chem and bio courses from my previous college and waived that requirement for me at WashU, but none of my other credits counted for crap except toward graduating. So if you are doing biomed eng, they will NOT waive your bio or chem classes, you will retake them, but instead waive Social Science, History, or English courses instead.</p>

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<p>I have talked by phone with the Freshman Transcript Evaluation people in the school of engineering. They told me that as long as I have a grade of B or higher for a class, and if the course description strongly correlates with one at Wash U, then I would be awarded the credit. However, I couldn’t get in touch with Mr. Tobin Harris about this (assuming that he is on vacation). </p>

<p>I’m definitely going to take Chem again, since my diagnostic was a not-so-hot 22. But I believe that I’m extremely strong in the college math area (I was recommended by my professors to be the lead math tutor at my university -> no pay for a HS student though lol), and have no need to take diff-eq, calc 3, etc… again. This is extremely important because I have potentially 13 classes that are transferable, which means at least a year of college work towards graduation. </p>

<p>I’m sure that I’ll have to put in a little more work to be successful at Wash U. Thanks for your insight.</p>