<p>Hi I am a current freshman at UC-Berkeley. I am interested in marketing and have had a pretty unfulfilling time at UC Berkeley. I am bored at school and unexcited by my classes. I know Wake Forest isn't as highly ranked as Berkeley is but I am used to small, engaging classrooms and I like actually knowing my professor. Also, the huge community at Berkeley has made for a really lonely experience thus far, another reason the smaller size of Wake Forest is attractive to me. However, I am from California and have made friends at Berkeley. I am nervous about moving to North Carolina because I did not like other southern schools like SMU and Vanderbilt when I visited last year. I am not a super girly girl and didn't like the vibe I got from the other southern schools. I didn't experience this as much when I visited Wake but I was only there for a day so I am still nervous about it. Any thoughts or helpful comments? Especially regarding the vibe/feel of Wake and the students </p>
<p>We are from Boulder, CO so I kind of know where you are coming from culturally. My son is set to go to Wake Forest this fall and he could not be more excited. For him it seems to be a perfect fit:</p>
<p>My son wanted a school with a traditional collegiate campus… Wake has Neo-Georgian architecture, grassy quads and Wait Chapel as a central landmark.</p>
<p>He wanted a school that was not too big or too small. Wake has an undergrad enrollment of 4800 and around 2600 grad students for a total enrollment of 7000+.</p>
<p>My son wanted a school that wasn’t too isolated. Yes, Winston-Salem is not SF (or Boulder, Austin or Iowa City even) but there are things going on for students who are willing to get off campus and rub elbows with the locals and students from the Carolina School of the Arts and Salem College. My son is fairly pragmatic about Winston-Salem. He noted that “at least he didn’t have to worry that the surrounding town was going to be more interesting than his college campus”. Good point. It encourages students to make their fun on campus, which in turn helps build relationships. </p>
<p>He wanted a school where he could have a personal relationship with his professors. He can’t say for sure that this is actually going to happen, but when he visited, the department chairs for both the programs he is interested in (theater and history) spent a substantial amount of time talking with him and showing him around.</p>
<p>My son wanted a school where the students cared about academics. He visited campus twice and stayed two nights in the dorms during the second visit. The vast majority of the students he met were smart, erudite and some of them were down-right geekie. I don’t think Wake gets enough credit for having this sort of academic culture. I think people see that Wake is a private school in the South and they think that the students are all going to be LAX bros and sorority girls. The theater students my son hung out with were all double (some triple) majors and studying subjects as diverse as Chinese, political science and accounting. My son’s impression is that students at Wake are excited about learning. They are the type to stay up talking late into the night about topics and ideas that have caught their fancy. </p>
<p>My son wanted to go to school somewhere different than where he grew up. Boulder has a certain cultural and political vibe (as does Berkeley). While my son identifies as liberal, he wanted to get outside the Boulder bubble and get a different perspective. He is not afraid of hearing a different point of view. Boy, you should see people here roll their eyes when my son mentions that he is going to school south of the Mason Dixon line. And just last night, my father-in-law nodded his head and made cryptic remarks about how “the South is veerrryy different.” What ever. If it is, my son sees that as part of the education. Given that Wake draws from all over the country, I think my son is actually going to meet students from very diverse backgrounds.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, only you can decide if Wake is right for you. If you really think you want to transfer, I think you need to go back to Wake and see if the university will let you stay overnight with a student so you can get a better feel for the school. </p>