<p>Freshmen here! I will answer any questions that you have about AU that I can answer. </p>
<p>3.48/4 gpa
2020 SAT
30 ACT
Applied regular
EnviSci Major</p>
<p>My thoughts on American: I applied to AU randomly because my dad wanted me to apply to more schools and I thought I could count AU as a safety. I remember checking CC last year in the accepted threads and I see all these people with amazing stats get rejected. It was rumored that American doesn’t accept over qualified applicants because they want to lower their acceptance rate or something. Everyone also said American really likes people who show tons of interest in the school…I didn’t do any of the optional essays and bsed my supplemental ones…Who knows, maybe I got lucky.</p>
<p>It is easier to be gay than it is to be republican at AU. Basically that shows how liberal the campus is. The campus is small and the class size seems even smaller at sometimes. With there only being around 5k undergrads, it sort of feels like a high school. Everyone you’ll meet knows someone that you know, whether you know it or not. Every time you walk to anywhere on campus, you’ll always see people you know (unless you’re a shut in who made no effort to make any friends.) </p>
<p>The ratios for girls to guys was 38% guys to 62% girls or something like that. You can definitely feel the ratio around campus, especially since girls tend to be doing things or going places more often than male students. From there, a decent portion of the guys are gay as well. If you are a straight male you will be feel, as my friend put it, “statistically empowered.” </p>
<p>People market themselves very well here, maybe it’s because everyone wants to get into policy and law and ****. Everyone seems to have all these grand plans of becoming senators or ambassadors, when most of these people have no idea what they want to do either. AU has many positives too though. The class sizes are small so the professors care about you more (I think more than other schools, not sure since I’ve never been to anything that’s not AU). There is immense potential for opportunity here due to the nature of the location. </p>
<p>If you have any further questions, ask away.</p>
<p>Not that it really makes a huge difference because that’s not really my thing, I’m just curious as to how prominent that kind of thing is and how the social scene is structured at AU? Sorry haha that’s a really weird question.</p>
<p>People still party at AU despite it being a dry campus. Of course you have to be smart about it because if you get caught by your RA you could get reported.</p>
<p>@slmx38
It was based on the financial package I received. My EFC for FAFSa was 0. I only pay for housing, dining, and other fees. I compared the offers from other schools, but ultimately decided that I wanted to live in DC and not in the middle of nowhere.</p>
<p>@AROTCDanK
It’s a dry campus, but at the same time people store handles in their dorms. We have this policy called “your body is not a container.” So basically you can walk around completely bonkers and you’re fine as long as you’re not in possession of alcohol. Some RA’s are really anal about things, while others do not care about anything. </p>
<p>AU is definitely the party school in DC. GW and Georgetown parties are weaker than AU frat parties. The Frats are usually 20-30 minutes away by walking distance. A lot of people went to them in the beginning of the year, but then many frats started doing invite only and a lot of people also lost interest in frat parties. As someone who goes out a lot, I find them to be a lot of fun. You meet a ton of new people and get free alcohol. There is so much to do in DC though, so even if you’re not into frat parties, you’ll never really have a dull weekend unless you choose to absolutely do nothing.</p>
<p>@oldbae, may I ask what courses you’re taking this semester and how would you compare the rigor of the classes as compared to your high school classes? Are you finding it takes a lot of time to keep up with the workload? Do you feel you came in well-prepared academically?</p>
I wouldn’t generalize from oldbae’s experience. I know my D easily tested out of college writing, as do many others, and had completed precalc and calc in high school (and she was hardly a math person), so it seems oldbae has a particularly light course load. It will get harder!</p>
<p>Just to be clear, the only way for freshmen to place out of the College Writing requirement is to have taken either AP Language or the equivalent IB exam and received the required scores (4 or 5 on the AP). There is no way to do it once you are on campus - you have to take courses to satisfy the requirement.</p>
<p>Never understood why AP Language satisfies the requirement but AP Lit doesn’t.</p>
<p>@eldeekay9 I think it’s ENVs-160. It’s a new course that was added this year for enviro majors only. </p>
<p>My schedule is very easy compared to my course load in high school. I took ap bio, ap lit, ap stats, ap gov, and calc ab my senior year. Good thing I was the king of 3’s so I got 0 credits. The course load for most freshmen are not that challenging, since most are doing gen eds anyways.</p>
<p>Also I wouldn’t call my course load particularly light. Two lab classes are not really a walk in the park</p>
<p>That’s right, I thought you needed a 5 in AP English to place out.</p>
<p>oldbae, you were probably smart to take such an easy course load for the first semester. My son should have done that. He came in with 23 hours of AP credit and dove into classes with upperclass students…not smart! </p>
<p>Not so much that he couldn’t do the work, but I think his first set of exams or two didn’t “read” the same as those of the upperclassmen. His essay answers were likely not as sophisticated, critical or detailed. It took him a while to learn how to be competitive at such a high level–even though he felt he generally understood the material, he had to learn how to demonstrate his mastery.</p>