<p>Hey Guys I am currently a senior residing in Texas:</p>
<p>Race:South Asian Grade: About to be a senior (Class of 2011) Rank: 32/600 (about top 5%) GPA: 3.92 unweighed (I don't know my weighed) School/Class Type: Public School/Very Competitive SAT: 1800 (620 M, 580 CR, 600 W) ACT: 27 SAT II's: 650 (Math Level 2), 620 (US History) AP: 4's and 3's (US History, English Literature, English Language, World History) Extra-Curriculars: Business Professionals Of America (Vice President), HOSA, JSA (Founder of chapter), National Honor Society, Aerospace Club (Founder), Chess Club, Student Council, Asian-American Students Association (historian), Tutor for AP History subjects (United States and World History mainly), Interned with FUNCEDESCRI (An organization which helps raised money for malnourished countries specifically Guatamala) Honors/Awards: Nominated to join the National Youth Leadership Forum on National Defense (I don't know if this really is an honor but I saw it other people put it on their honors), Participated and Nominated in NASA Texas Aerospace Scholar Program, AP Scholar, Honor Roll, 2nd Place BPA Regionals for Video Production/Financial Math, 6th Place UIL District for Social Studies and Current Events Community Service: 250+ hours volunteering at the hospital and library in my area.</p>
<p>I understand my standardized tests aren't so hot, my ACT is of course the more better one but I would really thank you guys that are reading it to give me some accurate and blunt feedback, don't hesitate to be blunt; also GWU is one of my top/dream schools!</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>P.s: I am retaking my standardized tests fyi!</p>
<p>Our office is located a few stations from the Foggy Bottom metro station, and we hire a ton of GW graduates/interns. WHY?</p>
<p>According to the CEO, who is not a GW grad, and a number of the managing partners (some who are GW grads), GW is a first rate, first tier, internationally (as opposed to regionally/locally) known university. Its easy access via subway to the major agencies/firms in the D.C. area also helps. In fact, I was told that if you mention GW in the HIGH-END business world anywhere on earth, they will know GW is a prestigious school.
We hire GW people because we want to impress our clients/customers worldwide, and GW does it very well for us.</p>
<p>Leonidas: Do not be distracted - you seem to be on the right track. Very many get rejected by GW’s admissions, so stay focused.</p>
<p>I think your SATs need to be higher (GW only accepted 31.5% out of 21,177 applicants), and some of the GW interns we hired had 800s on at least one of their SATs. </p>
<p>Your ranking looks good (the average class rank for the Class of 2014 “is at the 91st percentile,” according to GW’s website).</p>
<p>Go for at least a 4.0 GPA on the 1st semester of your senior year, and send it to GW. Good luck!</p>
<p>I find it interesting to read an article like the one in the link, which although I’m sure has some bits of truth, also seems very biased. While I realize that a website such as “Rate my Profs” isn’t a scientific study either, it does give students’ opinions and perceptions of their classes, profs, instructional quality,etc, which is very valuable and insightful when considering what school to attend. Since the article’s author references the Ivy League schools and Georgetown so much I went on rate my profs and checked out students’ opinions:</p>
<p>Average rating for all profs reviewed by students at each school:</p>
<p>GWU 3.34
Brown 3.21
Columbia 2.37
Cornell 3.17
Dartmouth 2.54
Harvard 2.95
Penn 3.26
Princeton 2.85
Yale 2.59</p>
<p>saf and 5k, thanks for the interesting info.</p>
<p>spt.lionidas, GWU regular admissions is very unpredictable, and it gets more so every year. Definitely a crapshoot. Just take a look at last cycle’s RD thread from the end of March. Many shocked and unhappy people.</p>
<p>Is that not the point of the article? The author is suggesting that you can essentially “buy” your way into the ranks of the elite by charging (now) $43k/year in tuition so that you can engage is what is essentially an arms race of construction projects that will hopefully attract wealthy students and make you appear among the same ranks as the ivies. The fact that businesses are now “wowed” by a GWU degree simply suggests that Trachenberg’s master plan to rebuild the school as “as a trophy, a symbol…a sort of token of who they [students] think they are” has obviously worked. The real question is whether students are actually receiving a world-class education that justifies a tuition price that is now even higher than the Ivies, Stanford, and MIT, among other top-tier schools, or that it merely seems that way.</p>
<p>jassy12: We are not naive not to look at the quality of the people we hire. We receive many resumes from around the country and some from various parts of the world. The people we interview from GW and hire can hold their own really well when compared to other candidates. Good marketing (or good “master plan”), alone, will not be enough to gain worldwide prestige for a school. It so happens that the GW people we hire do the work well in a timely fashion, and are therefore well-received by our worldwide clients/customers.</p>
<p>Well this goes back to the argument of “nature vs. nurture”. Does the particular university you go you “make” you into a really competitive hire? Are you going to be a smarter, more intelligent person just because you go to an Ivy and not a public school? Or is it that someone who has the potential to get into Harvard will find success whether he or she goes to Harvard, a public school, or drop out all together? </p>
<p>Chances are the very competitive GWU students you are referring about would have succeeded anywhere. The real question is whether or not they “needed” to spend $43k/year for four years to get to where they are. </p>
<p>Just a personal disclosure, I just graduated from a public school ranked higher than GWU for a sixth of the price and headed for grad school elsewhere next year. I’m posting here because I am always interested in reading about issues in higher education and came across this particular article about GWU. My own opinion is that the value of an undergraduate education is becoming quickly diluted across the board and that it is increasingly important to specialize in a technical skill (major in CS, engineering, math) or get into grad school if you want to be truly competitive for gainful employment. </p>
<p>If an undergraduate degree is “not enough” anymore, then why not save as much money as you can as an undergrad and then choose your “dream” school for a specialized graduate degree that will actually help you find a job? Just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>jassy12: I fully understand where you are coming from. However, philosophically, the reasoning you are using to beat up on GW’s ability to attract student applicants despite its high tuition does not bode well. You use phrases such as “same ranks as the ivies” and “ranked higher,” but whose rankings are these? </p>
<p>We are fully aware of the statistics (GPAs, SATs, APs, etc.) of many schools. The fact is we are an international firm/office, and if our clients/customers think highly of GW and consider it a very prestigious school, and our GW people satisfy their needs well; that’s all the ranking we need.</p>
<p>I agree that college tuitions are ridiculously high, but that holds true across all the U.S. universities/colleges. There are intangible reasons why GW can command its price, perhaps different reasons why the “ivies” can too.</p>
<p>jassy12: Just as a footnote, we look at the average GPAs, SATs, etc. of various U.S. schools, and interview only from certain schools for college internships. GW is up there among the highest scores. Again, it so happens that the GW students perform extremely well when compared to their peers from other schools during their interships.</p>
<p>Nobody is suggesting that GWU students aren’t good students with good test scores. I don’t think the article suggests that at all. In fact, the whole basis of the article centers around GWU’s rise from a cheap commuter school to one that is now ranked by US News & World Report as just outside the coveted group of first-tier schools (51st). The criticism of GWU that I share with the author is that the university has made it a priority to try and rebrand itself into this elitist institution on par with Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc, by raising tuition to astronomical new heights so that it can fund giant construction projects for new buildings and thereby attract the kind of student who’d otherwise try for the Ivy League. The author is concerned with how GWU’s drive to increase its “prestige factor” appears to be more important to them than actually helping their students, say, get the best value out of their education as possible. </p>
<p>Since you are a hiring manager on CC for whatever reason, you are looking at college grads simply from an “employability” standpoint. That’s fine, but you have to realize that employability is not the sole basis as to how you judge the quality or value of a university. GWU students may be hard workers, but it doesn’t make their lives any easier knowing they have, on average, $32,000 in non-dischargeable student loan debt following graduation. </p>
<p>By the way, the “intangible” reasons as to why GWU’s tuition is so high is not very intangible at all. GWU has a tiny endowment for a 25,000 person school at $1 billion, which equates to around $40,000 per student (consider that Princeton’s endowment per student equates to 1.9 million). So it must rely heavily on tuition revenue (as opposed to private fundraising) in order to fund the massive expansion projects that serve to broaden its visibility among institutions of higher learning.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your feedback, money seems high but it isnt too much of a worry… so to all you guys am I better off applying to American than GWU as far as aid and admissions go? according to last years entering class profile mid 50 sat is abut 1890 - 2090 and mid 50 act is 28-32… by the way schmohawk says the unpredictability of admissions it sounds an awful lot like georgetown, extremely unpredictable… so should I back off?</p>
<p>leonidas: As for now, I think GW is a reach. Have you taken a review course for the SATs? Perhaps you should take an SAT review course, increase your SAT scores, then go for ED, as schmohawk suggested. Again, good luck!</p>