The University of Washington - Seattle

Date: Apr 07 2011
Major: Philosophy (This Major's Salary over time)
UW really isn't a bad place to go to school, but it's not great for undergraduate work. Seriously, this is a MAJOR research university which receives billions of dollars to discover, test, hypothesize, and create. For example, my dorm room looks into a building which has a particle accelerator in the basement that this Uni would like people NOT to know about. Come here once you've done your undergrad at Western Washington, Whitman, or any other small Oregonian/Californian school. Hell, if you're not even from the West coast come here to do research. But for the love of God, this is not the place for undergrad students. If you come here for undergrad you will be relegated to giant classes with uninteresting professors for three days a week, and small classes with interesting TA's the other two days. A lot of the undergrad departments here are also very weak. I've bounced through four majors before I found a department -philosophy- which was well based, and even still they are weak in areas -for example they don't have any studies in Eastern philosophy, they pawned that off to the comparative religions school.

The point is this. There ARE ways to afford private undergrad schools. There ARE ways to get a great education as an undergraduate. There ARE ways to avoid getting stuck in a MASSIVE university for four years. Seriously explore all of these options before you go to UW for undergrad.

Like I said, I like it here, and I like my professors and department -now that I found the right one- but I know people who are having a miserable time, and I can see how one could have a miserable time here. Come to this school with extreme caution.