An Alum's Parent perspective of W&L

<p>To add to the wonders of the honor system...
Not only can you schedule your own exams, and (often) choose where you take them...
You are completely free to freak out, jump up, run out of the building, and run to the bookstore to buy a test book two minutes from the start of the exam upon realizing you need one. ;) 'Twas an interesting way to start that exam.</p>

<p>Could be some bad habits in the making, though...namely, putting random things in corners of buildings and picking them up an hour later without a care in the world. ;) I really need to watch myself when I go home to NY on breaks.</p>

<p>If you attend W&L -
make sure ya own a cow bell for the football games
make a visit to Traveller - he likes apples
say HI to EVERYone you see - Speaking Tradition REALLY works
keep your eyes open for men in black
know someone with an inner tube you can borrow
don't shut the doors on the Pres's garage
keep the VMI's in check
practice your swimming
enjoy Fancy Dress
OH - and tell your parents to stay away til parents weekend - if you don't - the Pres will.</p>

<p>I know that this thread is starting to die, but I wanted to reply anyway.</p>

<p>I would have loved to go to W&L for undergrad. If my grades were as good my freshman and sophomore years as they are now, Washington and Lee would have been a good possibility for me. Unfortunately, my grades during my underclass years were not that great. I'll be going to DePauw next year (I am very happy with DePauw too, though).</p>

<p>However, I did have the opportunity to spend last summer at W&L as journalism Summer Scholar. The speaking tradition that has been mentioned here is very strong. My professors (deMaria and Jennings--Jennings is now retired, though) made a point to speak to me outside of class and were very kind (and vice versa). While I was on my way Sweet Things one day, I ran into Mr. deMaria and his wife. He made a point to introduce me to her. </p>

<p>Aside from the speaking tradition, it is obvious that W&L has strong traditions. Even though I was only there for a summer program, I could tell that academics at W&L are top notch. My classes were difficult (esp. Dr. Jennings’s law class), which left me with the impression that the whole University took academics seriously. The honor code was also in effect for summer scholars, and I was very impressed with the regard in which the counselors (W&L students) held the one-strike-and-you're-out honor code. Also, the presence of the Cadaver Society was very noticeable--the bridge to the law school, entrances to Graham-Lees, there were cadaver symbols everywhere.</p>

<p>Lexington itself is a great little town. You can tell that it is a southern town. The people were very nice and welcoming.</p>

<p>So, from all I have seen, W&L is an excellent school, deep in tradition. I kind of miss it, though I am the only one to blame for me not going there . For anyone thinking about W&L (I guess it's a little late now, though), really consider it. It's a great place.</p>

<p>If I hadn't gotten into Yale, WNL was my second choise school. I spent the sumemr there at Summer Scholars, fell in love with the school.</p>

<p>well it is recognized that UVA, Duke, are better than W& Lee. I didnt even know that Washington and Lee even existed and found out about 6 mon ths ago.
but the academics at these places (uva/duke, etc etc) are top notch.
i am not so sure about W& lee. I am just giving general impressions of people who i asked along with mine.</p>

<p>Check out the Common Data sets for UVa and W&L. The stats will prove you wrong.</p>

<p>nurjahon--</p>

<p>as motherdear urged you to do some due diligence, i concur.</p>

<p>W&L isn't known as well as Duke in this part of the country either. However, those who are familiar with it know that it is on a par with UVA or Davidson or other fine institutitions. Once you get to a certain level, it seems ludicrous to say some school is ranked #4 or #17.
I am leery of even talking about Duke due to the enviroment created by its gang of 88, the town of Durham, Mike Nifong, Crystal Mangum, Kim Roberts, its President Brodhead, etc. They are an extremely smart bunch of kids but I wouldn't feel comfortable sending my kid there despite its name recognition.</p>

<p>I think you need to visit some of these schools and see if they fit. Each school is unique in feeling, culture, atmosphere. My kid visited Sewanee (liked), Davidson (hated), Wake Forest (liked a lot), Rice (liked) and W&L (absolutely #1). </p>

<p>You're much better off finding a school that fits rather than buying its prestige or name recognition. Who is to say you can even get in?</p>

<p>um- i actually got into duke, uva echols, princeton and penn..... and some others</p>

<p>Congratulations -- and here's hoping that one of those fine institutions will teach you that an honorable scholar need not disparage another university in order to celebrate his.</p>

<p>i was not trying to disparage WL in anyway- i apologize if i unknowingly did.
i am sure WL is a fine institution.
All i was saying that i did not see WL in the rankings. and the rankings for duke/uva were high on natl universities, AND i did not know much abt WL as i previously stated. the comparison i made was solely based on the rankings- i understand and agree that evveryone should find a 'match'</p>

<p>Maybe you should look under Liberal Arts colleges.</p>

<p>nurjahan,
Any semi-intelligent person knows that Liberal Arts colleges are not the same as National Universities, and US News categorizes them accordingly. If you check them out, you will see that W&L is ranked higher in the LAC rankings than UVA is in the University ones (and their stats are comparable, if not favorable to W&L). You need to compare apples to apples. I would expect more from someone who got into all those Ivies. Because, of course, the kid that attends the Ivy has to be smarter than the kid that attends some other Tier 1 school.</p>

<p>By the way, your SAT would either be average or below the average for W&L...which leads me to wonder if you had as much success as you say you did in the college application process.</p>

<p>Get a life Nurjahan. People like you make me glad that I chose a place like Washington and Lee over some Ivy. Ivy kids are all stuck up.</p>

<p>um my sat was very high- higher than W&L average...</p>

<p>and in my school- the "uva rejects or waitlisted" candidates chose W& L- there were two..</p>

<p>its hard to agree but W&L is just a refuge for the rich preppy kids who cant make it through the competition of the ivies+duke, and top public elites like uva and UNC</p>

<p>nurjahan,
2100 is not higher than the W&L average. I am not rich, preppy, or connected and I am going there, along with many other kids who are in the same boat. </p>

<p>Your sample is skewed by its ridiculously small size. I'm sure someone as ignorant as you has not considered the fact that UVA is a public school and is required by law to take a certain number of its students from in-state, making the competition for OOS spots intense. W&L is a private school; less than 20% of its students come from Virginia. Competition for spots in the W&L class is the same for all applicants. Moreover, W&L and UVA look for totally different qualities in applicants. Three kids I know were rejected from W&L this year; two of these got into UVA (1 in-state, 1 OOS) and the other didn't apply there.</p>

<p>I am proof that your generalization about the students not being able to make it through the selection process is false. I was accepted into the Honors College at UNC and awarded the Davie Scholarship, which is a full ride for OOS students. I did not apply to UVA because of the kids like you that go there. I turned the full ride to UNC OOS down for the opportunity of free education W&L afforded me (pun intended). </p>

<p>Keep going with those sweeping generalizations. I'm sure they'll make you a lot of friends in college and beyond.</p>

<p>What's the point of this spitting contest? All of these places are good institutions. So was Alcatraz. These pecking order arguments simply show how gullible we are in buying into the notion they can be holistically ordered. </p>

<p>It sells lots of U.S.News magazines, because we buy into the fiction of it all, and their editors realize we're fascinated with the idea of trying to figure out if Babe Ruth was better than Henry Aaron than Barry Bonds. Nah, let's leave that drug-laden, pill-popping bully off the list. He's an assterick. And he's not in the Ivies nor the National Liberal Arts Colleges. :cool:</p>

<p>Perhaps it would be more productive to ponder if God can make a rock that is too heavy for Him to lift? :confused:</p>

<p>C'mon. You all are supposed to be bright boys and girls. Taste the bait, but don't buy into this mythology ... You may flunk the real test and it's simply revealing your attempt to validate your alleged intellect via some academic BCS poll. ;)</p>

<p>HOORAY, Whistle Pig. I completely agree and that is what I have said over and over on many sites.</p>

<p>If you get in and its a good fit for you, good for you and good luck. But this obsession with "gotta get in and gotta go there" is ridiculous. And judging by how the Admissions office behaves, its any wonder they get anyone to come there.</p>

<p>Its a great school with great faculty. But its not the only game in town. And in many corners its completely unknown.</p>

<p>Not putting it down or anyone who chooses to go there if admitted. To them I say, "congrats!"</p>

<p>But all this ranking stuff is really just bird food.</p>

<p>Thank you for your support fried okra (When we lived in Memphis, we learned to LOVE that gooie veggie! :cool:) It's sad you and I need to even discuss this. These polls and rankings are nothing more than magazine and book sellers. There is zero validity to any of them, despite their rigorous attempts to measure the grains of sand on the beach, then claim this one's "better" than that.</p>

<p>In all of this tripe, there is very little discussion of "value added" to students' via the specific collegiate experience of Dartmouth vs. W&L vs. UVA vs. Unameit ... And in the end that's the real tune. But in truth measuring that in a comprehensive way is virtually impossible and if it were, grossly expensive. And the real bottomline is that many institutions would NOT want to know where they really stand.</p>

<p>There was a professor ... Robert Pace ... at UCLA for many decades who was perhaps the most genuine and honest pursuant of measuring institutional quality. His work was inherited by Alexander Astin, who is the guru of the frosh review administered at a great many colleges and universities. It seeks to gauge vascillating attitudes and values of incoming freshman by institution, vs. other institutions, and over many decades. It's interesting stuff but a digression from trying to assess quality which of course is a "back end" measure.</p>

<p>Pace, Astin and others have concluded that one of the very best alternatives to trying to assess how much value an institution really adds to a particular student is a function of one single variable ... time.</p>

<p>How much time to students devote to ... reading, problem solving, serving others, studying calculus or Shakespeare, etc. etc. And what they've concluded???</p>

<p>Slippery Rock indeed may add much more value as an organizational entity to its student learners than does Harvard. </p>

<p>Now, it can be argued in the pragmatic world that sitting next to Bill Gates' illegitimate daughter @ Princeton may pay real dividends unlike sitting next to my nephew in his history class at Winona State ... </p>

<p>But if we're being honest, that has nothing to do with what an institution purports to be delivering. It's coincidental.</p>

<p>So happy hunting, boys and girls. But please, rise above the mindlessness of trying to suggest that Brown is somehow "superior" to Bowdoin which is inferior to Bates which doesn't get enuff offspring into Ball State's Ph.D. program in ballistics and none of them beats Bryn Mawr in chess and ....</p>

<p>It's just total silliness.</p>

<p>fried--
please explain your statement " and judging by how the admission office behaves" in further detail. Did they lose the paperwork 3 times like Tulane did for one of my kids? Promise the moon but fail to deliver? What is it that is bugging you and just gets described in vague terms?</p>

<p>Thats amusing I worked at Cal Tech,I have never seen such academic arrogance,and I worked at UCLA and other top schools as well. The most arrogant and offensive person I met was the late Carl Sagan,who was there at the time giving a summer seminar. None of them would survive even with a Nobel at W&L I suspect. Brillant people students and faculty no social graces.</p>