Hi! My mom and I toured GW last April and were surprised to see that there were next to no students walking around the campus. We walked around twice over a period of two days and yet we rarely saw students. I was wondering if anybody could tell me if this was a regular thing or if this was rare. I was also wondering what the social scene is like.
when in April did you tour. ? That seems very surprising. Every time I visit my daughter there are students all over hte place. The social is scene is what you make of it . If you want to party, that is available. if you want to hang out and watch a movie you can as well. The big freshman dorm is very social. There are tons of clubs that have activities as well.
Yeah, something about your visit doesn’t seem right. You should see students all over campus from move-in in August until move-out in May. The only exceptions are Thanksgiving break, winter break, and spring break (although not all students leave campus on spring break). There are also periods of less activity, particularly during finals. Students are still around, but most are crammed into their favorite study locations.
The social scene is quite diverse and has been discussed here quite frequently (I suggest you try the search function to pull-up past threads. Just search “GWU social life”). With that said, I think the campus is best described as “busy.” Students at GWU are very driven, and subsequently throw themselves into both studies and extra-curriculars (particularly internships and student orgs). The sports scene isn’t very visible but it’s definitely there if you want to be involved. As far as social scenes involving “letting loose,” it ranges from wild frat parties to hanging-out in dorm rooms playing games or watching Netflix. Also, not all frat parties are wild. Most frats are rather tame (especially those focused on academics or special interests), with only a handful getting close to the stereotypical ones you’d see on TV. Hopefully this gives you an idea. Essentially it boils down to you being able to find another group of people with similar social interests.
@NHuffer I agree and that’s how I would pretty much describe campus life. It is unusual that you didn’t see many students- it could have been the time of day that you went because at certain parts of the day there tend to be a lot more students walking around campus than at other times. In the law school, for example, a lot of people tend to have classes in blocks of time so you see these rapid periods of students in the main hall and then students mostly in class. Also, of course, you won’t see many students taking 8 am’s obviously. I would also say that frat life is pretty tame at GW- the first couple of weeks everyone parties. Realistically, frat moves throughout the semester are more like sit on a couch during weekends when you aren’t hosting partying and either pop a couple of beers or smoke a couple of joints legally over some Netflix and pizza, make some move with sorority girls, play sports or have some donation sponsored public event. And yeah I mean George Washington University is generally regarded as a competitive school so people are definitely really invested in their time, passionate and honestly pretty happy