Washington & Lee vs Columbia

sciencewoman
Sun, 28 Apr 2013 23:45:42 +0000

My daughter is a first year Johnson at W&L and a friend of mine has a daughter who is a freshman at Barnard. We’ve been comparing notes all year. Both schools are extremely rigorous and both students have had some challenges adjusting to the increased demands. I would say her daughter has had more of a challenge. The locations of the schools seem like polar opposites…big city vs. small, rural college town. Her daughter loves all the city opportunities…she goes to Broadway, etc. She had to struggle to find a work study position, which I thought was odd and created extra stress. Both girls joined sororities, which has given them a family away from home.

The positive differences I have noticed about W&L, that didn’t seem to be in place for my friend’s daughter at Barnard/Columbia, are: all small classes, rapport/relationships with professors, getting first choice classes, confirming your course load the semester before (Columbia has “try it out” for the first week or two of class, and upperclassmen get dibs if the course is over capacity…ask about that…her daughter got burned a couple times), much more supportive campus community/staff, better social life, and easily arranged/automatic work study placement. My daughter had no interest in figuring out a big city, along with figuring out college, but everyone is different. She’d rather go to a research university for graduate school. An LAC is a great fit for her for undergraduate. I’m really glad she chose W&L. She has a whole network of people supporting her.