<p>My daughter has an early acceptance to Georgetown and is now visiting the campus. She notices that compared to George Washington, the students seem to be more involved in their classes and generally happier. in the GW classes she sat in on, she said that about half the students had laptops and many were on Facebook or checking email during the lecture. At Georgetown no one in her classes had laptops.</p>
<p>So her question is whether laptops are allowed in class at Georgetown. Compared to the old way my generation took notes in college, laptops seem to make so much more sense. It may have been that in those classes (Arabic and Theology) computers weren't practical. </p>
<p>Anyone able to comment on this?</p>
<p>Plus she loved the cafes and old-town feel of the community. It reminded her of Kensington in London. I am so looking forward to visiting her once she's in!</p>
<p>Well, based on my experience I can tell you for sure that there are many classes where students bring laptops. This usually includes classes that require a great deal of note taking and also classes which are long - 1-2 hours - and students can get bored easily. I have had plenty of classes where we checked our facebooks when we were not interested or the prof. was not saying anything particularly important. I think only some professors do not allow laptops, most of them do. In some classes it is simply impractical. For example, in our French class we have no explicit instructions regarding laptops but no one brings one as most of the work is done either on the board or orally. On the other hand, in some classes like Economics, people do bring laptops but when one deals with charts and formulas and specific symbols handwriting is preferred. She just has to see the class-specific situation and proceed accordingly.</p>
<p>PS. Congratulations on her acceptance and yes, the campus is more “campuslike” than that of GW. This so called “Georgetown bubble”, however, is sometimes thought to be a disadvantage, mainly when one needs to get to internships in the center of DC, etc.</p>
<p>*^Could you elaborate on the “Georgetown bubble”? *</p>
<p>Short version: Georgetown has a well-defined campus with relatively few access points (entire west side is bordered by Glover Archbold Park, which is fenced off; south side is largely bordered by a steep vertical drop; east side is largely sealed off by Georgetown Visitation’s campus), unlike GW. This, combined with the fact that there are so many things going on around campus at any time and the relatively close proximity to everything you could really need (between Georgetown and Glover Park, there’s not much that you can’t find. And you can always order online…) means that it requires a conscious and premeditated effort to go off campus for anything other than going to a men’s basketball game. It’s really easy to develop a comfort zone on campus and leave it very infrequently, which would mean missing out on a lot.</p>