Confused Dad Seeking Help About Wake Forest

Colleges and Universities A-Z Wake Forest University
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<p>I have followed the board but never participated. We are fortunate that my son was admitted to almost everywhere he applied which were a number of Patriot League schools and Wake Forest. His first choice, today, is Wake. I was wondering if anyone could help with a few questions. We are north of the Mason Dixon line in Pennsylvania and the school is not as well known. I also just saw this article from a WFU tour guide and it is somewhat concerning, Wake isn’t perfect, but it has become home Posted by A Wake Forest University Tour Guide on Mar 27, 2014 in Campus Life, Featured, Opinion" in the student newspaper. My son has a pre med interest but wants to major in history or government.</p>

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<li> Any thoughts on the reputation of WFU outside of the southeast?;</li>
<li> Is the pre med program or intro classes weed out type classes? Many schools talk about a high graduate school admittance rate but ignore that they got rid of 60% of the kids who started:</li>
<li> Is it difficult to register for the classes you need?</li>
<li> How strong is the North Carolina connection on campus? By this I mean is someone from outside of NC going to feel a bit out of place;</li>
<li> I know it is called Work Forest but he has challenged himself all through school. However, he did not some posts about arbitrary grade deflation. If he decided to pursue graduate school, I would not want him punished. Can anyone comment on that?</li>
<li> The tour guide seems to comment that the dorms are not great and the water barely potable. At $60k, I think you should be able to get a drink of water. Any thoughts?</li>
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<p>Again, he is our first to go to college and this is all new to us. Any thoughts are much appreciated.</p>

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<p>Hi, PA dad!</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Wake’s reputation is well-known where it counts: jobs and schools. The name recognition is somewhat spotty outside of the southeast, but then again, so is Emory’s. That’s not saying Wake doesn’t have a national reputation (it does) but we simply don’t have the stalwart athletics (think Duke and Stanford) or outrageous academics (think Harvard and Yale) that other immensely well-known schools have. Being a PA resident, I’m sure you think highly of Bucknell, and rightly so. It may surprise you that most North Carolinians couldn’t point out Bucknell on a map even if you put a gun to their head. The fact is, there are only a very small handful (5 or so at most) of private schools (or schools without a “University of State X” name) that you could bet strongly on most Americans knowing about. I have never met a potential employer who did not know of Wake and thought highly of it, and I have never talked to someone in academia who did not have the same sentiments. Wake Forest is a good school. Heck, we are a top-25 university…that’s a big deal. Don’t let Aunt Martha’s “SO WHERE IS WAKE FOREST AGAIN?” deter you from pursuing Wake as a high quality, nationally respected university. To put it in a in a more blunt and arrogant way, the people who matter for your son’s future will know about Wake Forest.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, pre-med has unofficial weed-out classes. BIO 113, CHM 111 (for some), and both Organic Chemistrys (especially those ORGOs). Pre-med at Wake Forest is not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. The fact is that at freshman orientation, around 60% of the people will be like “i want to be a doctor!” but by the end of freshman year, over half of them will be knocking on the doors of the liberal arts majors. That’s the case at every good school, though. No pre-med program is going to be easy, and that’s good. There’s a reason being a doctor is prestigious; you don’t get there by slacking your way through college. However, if you work your butt off and focus on school, getting into a top med school won’t be a problem. My friends at Wake who have put in the effort are going to top-5 medical schools; Wake will enable you to do that as long as you give her the requisite sweat equity in return.</p></li>
<li><p>No, the advisors are good. No one gets into every class they want all the time, but it works out 95% of the time. I’ve never had a problem. If you’re looking for a school with seamless registration, though, you’ll be looking forever. It’s just one of those college headaches every school has. Wake isn’t any worse than any other school in the country, and I’d like to think the great student-faculty ratio actually makes us better.</p></li>
<li><p>There are more students at Wake Forest from New Jersey than any other state. Less than a quarter of the students are from NC. Some people are actually complaining now that Wake is losing its Southern vibe because we have so many “daggum Yankees” coming down here. Duke is the same way. Everyone comes down south for school nowadays. If you’re afraid that your son will start toting rebel flags, dipping tobacco, and saying “all y’all” every other sentence, you can sleep easy.</p></li>
<li><p>It is hard to get good grades at Wake; it is a fact (some of my friends did an in-depth statistical analysis of Wake’s grade deflation for their econometrics class last semester) that Wake students’ GPAs are a good average of .2 lower than our “peer schools” (eg Vandy, Duke, W&L, Emory, GTown, UNC, UVA, etc). There are a lot of reasons why this is the case, and I could write an essay about it. However, I currently have over a 3.9 GPA. I’ve had a good social life and I’ve enjoyed college. I’ve just tried in class. Simple as that. There is no skating by classes, at all. I’ve earned my grades from working my ass off, meeting with professors, putting effort into my papers, studying harder than my peers. So getting a good GPA is definitely doable but you just have to work harder at it. My definition of “hard work” has changed exponentially, but it’s for my benefit. It works for our favor, too. My friend graduated last year and now works for Goldman in NYC, and they were stunned that he was able to pull a 3.6 GPA at Wake’s undergrad business school (goes back to name recognition point earlier). People know Wake is hard. The laurels of success, though, do eventually come around to those who fight through the load anyway.</p></li>
<li><p>The dorms are fine. They’re dorms. Of course they won’t be the Hilton. But they all have drinkable water (?) and facilities is great if you ever have a problem. Small school benefits. No, I don’t think my dorm room is the best place I’ve ever lived in, but it’s no better or worse than the typical college dorm.</p></li>
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<p>Hope this has helped, Go Deacs!</p>

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<p>Mcbabysheep,</p>

<p>Thank you. My son is pointing to your post as a reason he wants to be a Demon Deac. I am the nervous one, not him. A couple of follow ups if you don’t mind:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I agree with the reputation issue. WFU is a ACC school and while not as well known as Duke has a strong reputation. Bucknell is known in Pa and the northeast and within the Patriot League.</p></li>
<li><p>Is there anything else you can provide on Pre Med and frankly you have given a tremendous amount. My concern is simply we can go to Penn State and fight the weed out battle. My son is a hard and diligent worker. I remember from my undergrad experience that my university deliberately cut pre meds based on a curve and seemed to assign the most uncaring professors and TAs in higher education to the intro pre med classes. Is it the topic matter or the system which causes the weed out?</p></li>
<li><p>How are the advisors assigned at Wake. My son is thinking of pre med but with a humanities major. Any sense of whether this occurs much at Wake?</p></li>
<li><p>I appreciate your comments. The New Yorkers to the east of us look down upon those of us in the humble Commonwealth of Pa. I enjoyed NC and my son loves it.</p></li>
<li><p>Thanks for the explanation. I don’t know why a school would do that but at least I understand.</p></li>
<li><p>As for the dorms, there is an article on the internet version of Old Gold and Black which is along the top from a tour guide who says she is honest to the tours she brings through WFU. She claims that the water from fountains etc is horrible. I can’t explain it you need to check out the article.</p></li>
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<p>Many thanks and if you have any other insights we would appreciate them. Please forgive my nervousness.</p>

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<p>My daughter attended Wake and was pre med. Her major was Bio Chemistry. She worked very, very hard and was somewhat discouraged with the grade deflation. She had a great experience and was admitted into Wake Medical School and now is finishing up 3rd year. Wake was a great experience for her and she thrived. Her most memorable experience was study aboard. Wake is awesome in this regard. In my experience any major other than a science is tough to get into medical school because there are so many science requirements. Another great advantage of Wake is you get to know your professors and she had great recommendations for medical school by professors that really knew her. Her classes in chemistry were like 12 - 15. Good luck. </p>

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<p>PAdad, no worries, I’m here to help.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Absolutely, you’re right on. Also the reason Duke is so well-known is because of basketball. Duke’s academics have been able to rise because their national name recognition (thanks, Coach K) has meant more applications, which means higher selectivity, which means more prestige, yada yada yada. Honestly, the modern Duke is the house that Krzyzewski built. Wake Forest is the oldest private university in NC and I would argue our liberal arts program is better than Duke’s, or at least neck and neck. Duke is a fantastic school, but I never let my Blue Devil friends forget which private NC school was ranked highest in state before Coach K took the basketball job…</p></li>
<li><p>From my conversations with other students, I’d say topic matter. My friends who have done well have their dorm bookshelves stocked with such titles as “Orgo for Dummies,” “Explaining Genomes,” “Microbiology for Dummies,” and a host of others. They’re putting in the effort to read 3rd party sources to further understand the subject matter, and they do well. I kid you not, there are some pre-med hopefuls who will barely do the readings, study for an exam for a few hours, do poorly, and then complain that Wake’s grade deflation or pre-med program is to blame. It’s simply a cop out for not working hard enough. In Orgo 1, the first exam is several pages of chemical compounds and you have to be able to diagram the compound under each problem. My roommate read this book called “organic chem made simple” or something like that and learned the patterns of each element in more detail. Then instead of stressing like everyone else was, trying to memorize every single diagram in the textbook, he took the info he learned and was able to see the patterns so that the problems made sense, instead of him trying to access the diagram he stored through rote memory. Stuff like that is what separates the doctors from the other students. If it were easy everyone would do it.</p></li>
<li><p>Freshman and sophomore year you have a random faculty adviser. Then once you declare your major you get an adviser from your department. Yes, I have several friends who are English or Philosophy or History majors and are pre-med, it’s definitely doable. I would suggest, though, tailoring your divisional (required) classes into what major you want early on, that way you have time to get it and your science classes done on time.</p></li>
<li><p>Okay, just read that article. There’s a reason she didn’t put her name on the article, because she knows at a school the size of Wake, people are going to approach her and be like “why…?” She sounds disgruntled and is just trying to get a rise of people, which is funny because she wrote it anonymously instead of being mature about it and owning up to it (funny how she’s so “honest” about Wake but can’t even muster up the honesty to put her own name on the piece). What she’s done is taken a few isolated incidents and painted the picture of life at Wake Forest. It’s just as offensive as a tour guide at VA Tech saying “Oh by the way if you come here, you may get shot because we had a shooting several years ago.” Honestly I don’t even want to take the time to rebut the article. It’s just total bovine scatology. </p></li>
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<p>I’m just going to address 2 points - weed out and water. The better schools will actually weed out kids earlier on. How many kids do you know that say they want to be a doctor? Now, break that down into how many say that because they truly feel a call to a medical career, versus those who want to be a doctor for prestige, money, or because their parents told them they should be a doctor. Then look at how many have the ability to succeed in medical school. It isn’t easy. Medical school demands a mastery of the material plus a huge work ethic and major time management skills. An undergrad school has two choices - baby along everybody, even those who are never going to master the material, and then have those kids either a) not get into medical school at all or b) get into medical school and fail because it’s just not where they’re meant to be. The other choice is to, early on, pare the class down to the kids who have the highest likelihood of success in upper level courses and are the best candidates for admission into medical school (or other grad schools). Would you rather kids go through 4 years thinking medical school is their future, only to have their hopes dashed as seniors (or later), or find out early on it’s not the right path for them - when there’s till time to explore other majors? My math/computer science program did the same thing. If you can’t make it through freshman courses, you’ll never make it through higher-level theoretical courses.</p>

<p>As for water, I’m pretty sure you can request water quality reports and find that it’s perfectly potable and well within all guidelines. However, when you go from one part of the country to another - or sometimes even just a few hours away - you’ll find huge differences in the taste of the water. When I go back home now, I can’t STAND the hard water. I grew up with it, but now that I live in the South my taste has changed (I don’t even feel clean after showers back home, although I know I am). Just because the water may taste funny compared to what someone is used to doesn’t mean it’s not fit to drink. Everyone is going to find something to object to somewhere. Me, I have a problem with everyone drinking their tea iced. Tea is meant to be hot!</p>

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<p>I have not read the article, but I will after commenting. As a semi-finalist for the Presidential Scholarship, my son stayed in the dorms for two nights with a current theater student. I asked his opinion about the conditions he saw. He noted that the student with whom he was staying did have a slightly larger room than normal because it was a room built to accommodate a wheelchair (unused that year). He believed, however, that the general condition of the dorm was very good. In his opinion, all the rooms were large enough to fit beds and desks without having to loft or bunk the beds. This is NOT true at many universities. My son was also charmed by the lounge on the first floor of the dorm. He said that people actually hung out in it and that there was always someone playing the piano. </p>

<p>As far as the water issue. When we were visiting, I can’t say that I went out of my way to note the water quality. However, I don’t drink bottle water, I always drink from the tap, and I did not notice that the water on campus had an off taste. (Try drinking the water at USC!)</p>

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<p>Hi PA dad. I see that you’ve already received lots of good responses, but I’ll throw in my 2-cents anyway!</p>

<p>My son is a current sophomore at Wake and I can’t say enough wonderful things about it. He is our second son, so I have some point of comparison (older son graduated from Vanderbilt May 2013). As far as reputation, we are from the DC area and Wake is very well known here - there are lots of grads and current students. There are so many excellent schools that lack the traditional “name recognition” (think Williams, Amherst, Carelton, etc) but, those “in the know” or anyone in academia will certainly know that Wake Forest is an excellent school. You would assume that everyone knows about Vanderbilt, but you would be surprised how many times we were asked, “Vanderbilt, now where is that??” </p>

<p>I can’t comment too much about pre-med (son is not a science guy) but he has plenty of friends in both the sciences and business. Yes, they work hard, but I’m not so sure either of those tracks are a cake-walk at any peer institution.:slight_smile: </p>

<p>He has never had a huge issue registering for classes. Class registration is never fun at any school but I don’t get the feeling it’s a bigger issue at Wake than any where else - certainly no different that what S1 experienced.</p>

<p>The NC thing - never been an issue. He has friends from all over the country. </p>

<p>“Work” Forest rep - I will admit to being concerned about this prior to my son choosing Wake. He had narrowed down his choices to Wake, Richmond and Boston College and I did worry that Wake would be the most rigorous (only based on the “Work Forest” rep I had heard) and I didn’t want him stressed-out and not enjoying his college years. 2 years later, this seems so silly. He works no harder than any other kid at a peer institution. He has a VERY full social life, is involved in other campus activities and is doing well academically. The kids at Wake are smart, very smart, but (in our experience) want a balance. Yes, they probably talk a lot about how “busy” they are and how “hard” it it, but I heard the exact same thing from my older son’s friends too. My kids did attend a very rigorous high school, so a heavy workload and the discussion about the heavy workload, was nothing new. They both still say that HS was harder than college!</p>

<p>I truly have no idea what the water thing is about. I don’t think the dorm situation is bad at all - again, no worse than S1’s experience. Heck, the new dorms are like the Ritz!! </p>

<p>No school is perfect but we have found Wake Forest to be the perfect hybrid of a Liberal Arts College and National Research University with D1 sports. And, most importantly, his professors are amazing! The fact that our sophomore son has “relationships” with them speaks volumes about their interest in the students and their dedication to educating the undergraduates. I can honestly say this has been the biggest difference between our 2 son’s experiences thus far. </p>

<p>Congratulations to your son on his acceptance and best of luck with the decision process. </p>

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<p>All,</p>

<p>Thank you so much. The response to this post seems to confirm how my son feels about WFU. If I may ask a follow up, do you have an experience or opinions of the Chemistry Department? </p>

<p>Second, for the first two years, if you are interested in the sciences, or the Humanities for that matter, do you typically receive an advisor in those areas. Wake seems to stress advising but my own limited experience from college was that the initial advisor could not have cared less.</p>

<p>Finally, regarding the “water” question, I am just following up on the article written by the tour guide who seemed to think that the water on campus was not drinkable. I thought it was bizarre. The Admissions Office might want to screen better. I am certainly glad we did not get her when we were there.</p>

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<p>Padad - Although my son has lots of friends (including his GF) taking chemistry classes, I don’t have any first-hand knowledge about the department. If you plan on going back to the admitted students program, perhaps make an appointment with someone in the department. Everyone at Wake is very accessible and approachable, so I would guess they would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Also, if you don’t already know, there is a “Parents” page on the WFU website. On that page, there is a sub-link “Class of 2018 Parents and Families” that has some useful information as well as other helpful links. </p>

<p>The kids are assigned a general adviser for the first 2 years (they also get a student adviser) - they are not required to declare a major until spring of sophomore year. My son chose not to meet with an adviser in his chosen major/minors until this spring because he was unsure about his major. I do know his GF met with people in several departments (as early as freshman year) because she is contemplating 2 majors and 2 minors - just a little bit of an overachiever!! </p>

<p>I would assume if a kid declares a major prior to sophomore year, they would be assigned an adviser in that department immediately. Either way, I am sure you can always schedule a meeting with any department or with anyone in the advising department to discuss class planning. All those services are readily available to the students, its just a matter of them seeking them out.</p>

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<p>Also meant to mention that the people who work in the “Office of Parent Programs” (a sub-link on main “Parent” page) are wonderful! They will (try) to answer any of your questions and I believe one of the Directors also works as an academic adviser for freshman and sophomores so she would be an excellent source for your advising questions. </p>