<p>A "friend of a friend" visited GW a couple of weeks ago during the admitted student event, and is getting cold feet. She may just be suffering from general nervousness about switching coasts, starting college, and so on. However, she said the other admitted students she spent time with were eastern prep girls who weren't welcoming and made her feel inferior and hopelessly unworldly. Please don't kill the messenger, I'm just passing along her comments. Did she just have bad luck with roommates that weekend, or is this the norm? She's scrambling to check back with other colleges she was admitted to for a Plan B.... </p>
<p>I also posted this on the GW site for more direct connection to GW families...</p>
<p>We have two friends who attend GW and both love it. No prep schools in our area, just plain ole regular high schools. They did encounter the rich types but seem to feel fine about the school. On the other hand, know two in Georgetown and they aren't very happy. Not a whole lot of difference between the 4 but they are all still where they started (3 just finished sophomore year and one senior year)</p>
<p>There are thousands of students at GW, and how many friends does one person really need? She'll find her niche--just encourage her to go to different clubs and events, meet people in classes, and just make a lot of connections to try to find compatible people. Somehow I think she'll be fine.</p>
<p>I know two women who graduated from GW 3-4 years or so ago. Both were inner-city public-school graduates; both were pretty allergic to preppiness. They both liked GW a lot. (I also know one very preppy friend-of-a-child who went there, was unhappy, and left, but it's hard to separate out how much of the unhappiness was due to GW and how much due to a family tragedy during her first year there.)</p>
<p>It was bad luck. Tell her not to worry & go. Just warn her that, as a Westerner, she may get some strange questions. My Colorado daughter is at school in Boston where someone asked, in all seriousness, whether she rode a horse to school :)</p>
<p>Goes both ways. What follows is an actual, complete, verbatim conversation I had the second week of college with a classmate from a small town in the Southwest:</p>
<p>JHS: Hi! I'm JS.
Classmate: JK. Nice to meet you. . . . S? That sounds Jewish. Are you Jewish?
JHS: Yes.
Classmate: There's a Jewish family in my town.
JHS: Really?
Classmate: Yeah. They own everything.</p>
<p>(I will note that this guy cleaned up really, really well, and has had a very illustrious career. I have run into him at several points along the way, and he's super. I'm sure, if he remembers this conversation at all, it is highly embarassing to him. But I was sure taken aback.)</p>
<p>Several students from our diverse HS go to GW and find it to be welcoming and fun for all. The encourage others from our HS to apply. These kids are midwestern, inner ring suburb, and of the people I know who are attending, at least one is Black and at least one is Jewish. Not Eastern Prep kids AT ALL. And they love it there. </p>
<p>I think she was just unlucky. Is she on the GW 2012 facebook group? If not, she should get on there post haste. She should post a
[quote]
Hey, who else is coming from "the West Coast?" "the South?" "the Midwest?"
[/quote]
to have a few fellow freshmen from her neck of the woods to "talk" to this summer.</p>