George Washington University

Date: Feb 23 2004
Major: Anthropology (This Major's Salary over time)
Your time at GW really depends on what you make it…but you have to work hard to make it worthwhile. Take internships, get jobs outside the city, take classes at the Smithsonian, do research projects and you might get something worthwhile out of it. If not, good like.

The students here are pretty much numbers to the administration. Getting any sort of paperwork done is made so difficult that apparently simply things (registering for classes, renewing financial aid) are made impossibly difficult. Few decisions appear to be made with student welfare in mind. Everywhere you look you see your money being thrown down the drain to make the school look better—though not really improve it in any meaningful way.

The students here, I have found, are of two sorts: brilliant kids who got into better school but are here because of the generous financial aid and lazy idiots who are here because they couldn't get in anywhere better. Seek out the former if you want to meet anyone interesting.

The faculty here (with a few notable exceptions) I have found to be excellent, and sympathetic to the problems the students experience. They seem to be equally frustrated by the adminitration and with the fact that there is pressure to "dummy down" their classes. If you can get to know them, however, it can be a rewarding experience—many of them have jobs outside the school, however, which can make it tricky to track them down outside of class.

The campus is both very safe and very dangerous. It is safe in that there are fairly decent security features in the dorms, policemen who patrol the streets and shuttles to take you back and forth between the dorms. However, while your chances of being mugged by a complete stranger are pretty slim, watch out if you're the victim of a member of the student body, because justice here is incredibly aribitrary. In the two years I have been here I have seen someone who sexually assualted someone on his floor (to which there were three witnesses) get off the hook, one student with two ounces of pot expelled and another let go with know charges, and all other sorts of disciplinary shenanagins. The rule seems to be that if Mommy and Daddy are well connected and your paying full tutition, you can do whatever the hell you please.

The dorms are beautiful, but God help you if you need anything fixed. It took me four weeks of calling every day to get them to replace my microwave, in an apartment I am paying 1300 dollars a month to live in. I could get a cheaper place in the building across the street.

In total, if you can get in somewhere better and you can afford it, go there. If you can't afford it or your an idiot, come here.