I transferred from WashU after my Sophomore year. Ask me anything

Colleges and Universities A-Z Washington University in St. Louis
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Hi,

I left WashU after my Sophomore year, where I studied Chemical Engineering and Mathematics. I’m now a Computer Science major. I’m a senior at Columbia now, and I just got into MIT for grad school. Ask me anything (but not why I transferred - I’ll answer that a little later in the thread - first I would like to be able to give un-[WashU]-biased answers to any questions you might have)!

*As a standard policy, CC does not allow threads to be closed to any member that wants to answer a question. So this thread is open to all that want to ask and answer questions about WUSTL. - Fallenchemist *

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Do you feel that you missed out on certain opportunities by attending a school in the Midwest for your first two years? Also, do you know how people back East view a degree from WashU compared to an Ivy League degree?

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Is WashU a rich kid school? By that I mean, does pretty much everyone’s parents there make over 200k/yr?

Is the St Louis or even the Missouri area similar to the deep, racist south? I know that at Vanderbilt in Tennessee, as soon as you step out of Nashville, you see confederate flags everywhere. What about that Ferguson thing?

Compare Columbia to Wash U. Is it straight-up better? Are the classes harder or easier? Is Columbia cheaper?

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I live in SoCal, but I’m always simultaneously amused and disturbed when I see remarks like those made by @chris2 about the “deep, racist south.” It’s amazing how people can imagine themselves (emphasis on “imagine”) as tolerant, open-minded, and free from bigotry–and the proceed to make such comments about regions and/or populations that they obviously know next to nothing about.

For what its worth, regions like Missouri, southern Illinois and Ohio, northern Kentucky, etc. have a great deal of cultural overlap. It’s where North meets South.

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Let’s not have this turn into a discussion on areas that are or are not “racist” and/or about sweeping generalizations. I will let these posts stand, despite my temptation to edit out that portion of chis2’s post, so that s/he can get opinions as to the overall racial atmosphere in St. Louis and on WUSTL’s campus, especially in light of Ferguson. As a native St. Louisan that grew up practically in the shadow of WUSTL I am tempted to answer, but I think I will stay out of this one and just moderate.

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Did you feel that WUSTL’s curriculum wasn’t flexible enough? How many people actually do one of their programs - Focus Program, Medicine & Society, etc.
Also, do you feel restricted by Columbia’s Core? Do you like it? Do you find it too Western-oriented? Do you feel that you have enough space to explore outside of your major?
I think I want to go into medicine, but I’d like to explore a lot outside of my major - are Columbia & WUSTL good schools for that? Or would going to an open curriculum school be better?
What do you hate most about both of these schools?

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Disclaimer: this is all based on my own, personal experience. I make no claims to know everything or to be objective. That said, I feel no connection to either WashU or Columbia.

@kstennis04‌ In the sense that I have found much more opportunity by virtue of being on the east coast, yes. By more opportunity, I mean I have an academic year internship that would have been impossible to have in the Midwest, because there are so many more places here and so much more going on. I missed out in other senses, too, like not being at Columbia for all four years. Transferring was an extremely formative process for me, and most of my friends at Columbia are also transfers, and I’ve noticed a distinctly different mindset about them, so there are benefits, including “maturity” that come with the transfer process, since you have to have a much better handle on your specific goals than you do when you apply for freshman admission, but even so I feel like I missed out on all that I could have done in my earlier college years. There are a lot of programs reserved for freshman and sophomores, for instance, in schools farther east. In terms of other Midwestern-specific things, it’s hard to say. There are more WashU-specific things than location-specific.

As far as people’s perceptions of WashU, I had the same problem that a lot of people from WashU have. At the end of my senior year of high school I told a relative “I’m going to WashU” and their reply was “What? You’re going to wash me?” and they were genuinely confused. Common responses I’ve gotten to mentioning Washington University are “Oh, in DC?” No. “Oh, in Seattle?” No. “Oh, Washington and Lee?” No, in St. Louis. “Oh.” Or I’ve gotten, from people who have heard of it, “That’s a good school.” Compared to when I say Columbia or MIT, when I get something like “Wow, you must be a genius!” or “No freakin way man, congrats!” I also frequently heard (about WashU): “Is that a community college?” (because of the “in St. Louis”). There’s no denying that there’s almost no name recognition, and no many how you spin it, that stuff is important. That was one of my 23 reasons for transferring (I made a list to convince my parents to let me).

@chris2 I’ve noticed a lot more rich kids at Columbia, but I hear they still abound at WashU - you just have to run in to them. I lived in a traditional dorm my freshman year, and most of the people on my floor weren’t rich. There was a good mix, skewed toward lower middle-class, although there were a ton of internationals on my floor, who I think must have been rich because they are typically more wealthy. Overall, I didn’t feel like WashU was overcrowded with rich people, nor did I feel oppressed by any kind of rich atmosphere.

I’m a white Hispanic. Which means I’m white. I got comfortable being in strange places with strange people back home (in the south) while taking buses home from school and walking around various neighborhoods, etc., but even so, I did feel a little uncomfortable occasionally while taking the metro, even at the Forest Park station (I think 1 stop away from campus), when people (who were mostly black) would marvel at the guy with the luggage and ask me questions like where I was from. But it’s not like the city feels racist or anything, at least not to me. It’s not a confederate-flag type thing, and the south isn’t all that racist. But of course, when it gets out that I’m from North Florida, nobody trusts my opinion on the south. I went to camp outside of Nashville for 7 years (3 weeks at a time), and Tennessee didn’t seem too bad either. Parts of Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama seem to have some issues but most of the south is actually, in my opinion, far less prejudiced than the north - a lot of northerners seem to have something against southerners, to the point that I’ve even witnessed southerners trying to act differently to fit in at WashU (I almost did the same). Oh, and we are warned to not walk around the Loop at night. Also, a LOT - I think a majority - of WashU kids are from the Midwest.

Columbia is worlds better, I can’t deny. The classes are noticeably harder, and not just because they’re upperclassmen courses. Since I changed my major when I transferred, I had to take lower level Computer Science classes and some “Core” classes as a transfer, which, compared to WashU (where I also had taken some low-level CS and general requirements) they are much harder at Columbia. I’m only able to graduate on time because I started taking CS classes before I transferred, so don’t let that fool you. I’ll have to think a little more about precisely how I would compare the two schools. I’ll follow up with more details.

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*no matter how you spin it.

Haha, typing a little too fast.

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@imlikeabird2‌ Sure, people do special programs. I can’t give a concrete percentage of how many people do, but it’s certainly a minority (otherwise they wouldn’t be special programs!).

Flexibility in your coursework depends on what you study. Pre-med is just a set of classes (not a major), so you naturally get a ton of flexibility at either school. For degree programs with more requirements, such as engineering, I think Columbia is somewhat more flexible than WashU, but not extremely so. If you take 21 credits a semester you’ll get a little extra flexibility at both places (I took 21 credits both semesters Sophomore year so that I could take Japanese in addition to CS classes and my ChemE requirements), but if you’re looking to do 12-16 credits/semester, you might be out of luck for a lot of programs, especially outside of premed. That’s just the nature of the beast, the beast being a college with a set program. It can be difficult to compare flexibility across two schools that don’t have a ridiculous amount of it, so I’ll just leave it at that. Neither school is ultra-flexible, but really, if you’re pre-med, it shouldn’t be a problem either way. An “open-curriculum” school won’t really give you a flexibility advantage.

The Core. The Core is pretty neat. It in itself offers some flexibility in that you can choose some of your Core courses. Furthermore, I think the Core is designed to give students a very broad intellectual and cultural perspective, and it doesn’t take away from your ability to explore things and minor in this or that. I’m pro-Core, and as an engineer, I have a modified Core with some interesting engineering-focused requirements, like a “professional-level course,” that exposes students to what you can really do in a particular field; but I fully intend to read a lot of the Contemporary Civilization (“CC”) or Literature Humanities (“Lit Hum”) books over the coming summer, that are requirements of the College [of Arts and Sciences]. Music Humanities was really fun and educational. Japanese Civilization and Art of China, Japan, and Korea were also fun Core classes (“Global Core”), and I learned a lot about something I was interested in from them. WashU, of course, just has the standard requirements, and nothing like the Core, which is very refined. It is not too Western-oriented, and there have been debates about that in the past, but that is simply not the goal of the “Masterpieces of Western Art,” etc. parts of the Core. 1) It would be impossible to teach about even a fraction of the cultures and intellectual ideas of the entire world to every student, 2) Western thought is what gave us the University, and there’s no denying that hey, you’re at one, and 3) There are more specialized classes for all things non-Western (and also a lot of things Western).

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@weirdalsuperfan- I find it a bit strange that you posted on Wustl. It seems disingenuous to me and a bit of bashing in the guise of helpfulness. Although Wustl gets a bad rap for name recognition among the general population, that is simply not the case for employers. My son was in Art Sci and he landed a good paying position in NY with a top media company. Employers were impressed with where he went to school. Many of his fraternity brothers are in major cities-- NY, LA, San Fran and Chicago. A large portion of students are from the east coast. Your assessment of the university is all over the place. Columbia is an excellent top ranked school. There is no question about that. I received my MBA there, but, despite it’s strong academics, it is definitely has some downsides. I’m sorry but I question your real intention here.

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@imlikeabird2‌ To continue, what do I hate most about both schools (note, I’m not comparing them to each other, so if I hate something about one school, that doesn’t mean the other school is any better):

WashU:

  1. WashU’s financial aid wasn’t that good.
  2. I didn’t like most of the people at all. There were plenty of good people, and maybe I got unlucky, but one of my reasons for transferring was the people. I really couldn’t stand them. One sub-category of people I met a lot of were people who were ultra-liberal to the point of intolerance (and most of my friends from back home are democrats). There were plenty of moderates and conservatives as well, but it seemed a little extreme even for a university. If that’s your thing then go for it. There are also a lot of people who are bitter about not going to better schools, or else they try to convince themselves that WashU is better than it is. Still, people at WashU try REALLY hard to be “accepting,” so you’ll surely find that if you need it (then again, most schools seem to have that attitude and have things like hotlines to call if you’re stressed, and try to make “safe” communities - one thing I’ve learned from transferring and visiting a lot of my friends is that a lot of schools share a lot of things, like the blue light system for instance haha).
  3. WashU’s Engineering is too new, and all its money goes to the med school!!! DANGIT (Columbia has enough money to go around, so that’s not a problem). This also meant lack of things like study abroad opportunities outside of pre-med (not that it’s a haven for pre-meds or anything).
  4. WashU didn’t actually have a very broad selection of courses compared to other schools I looked at like Penn, Columbia, and MIT. That limited what I could study. There was also a disconnect between research and the student body.
  5. Lack of name recognition.
  6. St. Louis. Didn’t like it. Things people I run into say that they like about it: Forest Park, the City Museum, and maybe some other random thing like the Loop. But I didn’t like St. Louis, and I’m not even from an exciting city. Sure, New York can be overwhelming, but that’s why I’m glad Columbia isn’t right in the middle of downtown.
  7. The dorms!! I don’t know how WashU gets ranked #1 for dorms (food is understandable), but the only good thing I can say about the dorms is that some of them look very nice on the outside, and in some of the common spaces. Even the freshman dorms you tour are nothing compared to what I’ve lived in at Columbia (my dorms here have been massive and with my own kitchen and bathroom), and WashU dorms are actually more expensive. Maybe upperclassmen dorms are better, but from what I’ve heard from upperclassmen at WashU, they’re about the same, and it seems like the image of having a nice dorm is what makes them popular. I lived in tiny, tiny (12x10 or so) spaces both years at WashU, and it seemed like that was the norm on the South 40 (freshman/sophomore housing).
  8. The WashU bubble.

Columbia:

  1. Classes are unforgiving
  2. No free subway pass? Are you kidding me?
  3. Stuff is just more expensive here.
  4. Dining halls close super early (8 pm)! AHHHGGGGHHGHGH
  5. Sometime city noises and the wind off the river are annoying
  6. It isn’t 100% smoke-free (walking past the library sucks)
  7. The small campus does sometimes annoy me, but I think it looks really awesome, and I’m sorry to say, I wasn’t a fan of the Danforth (WUSTL) campus.
  8. I’m sure there are other things - Columbia isn’t paradise - but I can’t actually think of anything besides sometimes you have to be an asshole to get things done. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else!

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t more satisfied with my experience at Columbia than at WashU.

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@cg123 Fraternities certainly help with employment. I’m pretty sure they are the top helping factor.

Should I have kept it a secret that I transferred from WashU, and not let anyone know that people do that, and never have made this thread? Or not let people know that WashU (along with Johns Hopkins) is the top school that people transfer from into tier 1 and tier 2 schools? I’m just here to give my experience. College is also about a lot more than just landing a well-paying job. You can get a well-paying job in a city that someone has heard of by going to virtually any school. It’s up to you to interpret my experience, but there were certainly things I enjoyed about WashU. But if I had loved it I wouldn’t have left. If nobody wants to hear from me, then this thread will die and I will go on with my evening doing my homework. I also knew plenty of Artsci and pre-meds who transferred.

I believe the goal of college is for the individual to find what is best for them, wherever that might be. So what if I’m not a big fan of WashU? Is it not helpful to point out what I perceived to be flaws in a school (“bashing”)?

So I just looked it up and, according to their website, “Nearly 65% come from more than 500 miles away,” which means that about a third are from the Midwest (yes, I know that the midwest does not perfectly extend in a 500 mile radius around WashU, but roughly, it does). Of course there are people from the east coast who go there. I’m not sure what you mean by my assessment being all over the place, but I never made any promises about being objective, and I will be the first to admit that Columbia isn’t perfect. There are not too many things I hate about it, but there are a lot of things I wish it had more of.

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As a parent of recent graduates from both WashU and Columbia, I disagree with a number of OP’s points, particularly the dorms. My WashU kid had gorgeous, spacious rooms all 4 years, while my Columbia kid had pretty awful dorms except for the final year. And when there were maintenance issues it took months for Columbia to come fix the problems (some were never fixed).

I’m glad that you have found happiness at Columbia OP, but I would like to say to prospective WashU students that my WashU kid had an experience so different from OP’s. He found the people to be friendly and accepting, and the academics prepared him well for graduate school at a top program in his field.

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My kid did a weekend at WashU. Said the dorms were the nicest ones. Has stayed in dorms at MIT, Duke, Williams, JHU, Rice, UT. Hated Williams and didn’t apply.

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@green678‌ I clearly stated that “people at WashU try REALLY hard to be “accepting,” so you’ll surely find that if you need it.”

Here’s the long and the short of it: WashU, and a lot of other schools, will prepare you for a career in your field. Surprise! But only you can decide what the BEST place for you is. Also, I haven’t visited every school in the US, so for all I know, WashU’s dorms aren’t half bad as far as dorms go, but “dorms like palaces” is an exaggeration, and ask anyone to describe their dorm in detail (dimensions, bathroom, kitchen, common area), and it becomes clear that it shouldn’t be a selling point. No, not all dorms at Columbia are extravagant, but I just happen to have had far better housing here than there. I guess my point is that dorms are dorms, and nothing is going to be like a 5 star hotel except maybe at a couple liberal arts colleges.

Take what I say as you will. I honestly don’t think WashU needs to be defended in its own forum. If you like it, then go there.

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You said the Columbia classes were much tougher.

Do you think that is for the better or worse? Harder classes generally mean a lower GPA, and I know that for grad school, strength of schedule doesn’t really matter that much. But on the other hand, tougher classes may mean that you learn more. Are you actually learning a lot more than you did at WUSTL? Or are the classes at Columbia needlessly hard? For lack of a better word, “weed-out” classes is something similar where they intentionally don’t teach you and if you pass then you’re smart.

On a similar note, are the professors better at teaching at Columbia? And you know, friendlier, more approachable, helpful, etc.

Thanks for the great responses so far!

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Okay, I’ll bite…why did you go to WashU to begin with? Did you not get into Columbia as a freshman?

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@chris2‌ While my GPA dropped significantly after I transferred, it doesn’t seem to have hurt me, since I’ve still gotten internships and into all of my top picks for grad school. In many ways, though, I think the classes that were very unforgiving were unnecessarily so. So, to answer your question, it was for the worse, overall. That said, I still learned a lot more in each class here than at WashU, for the most part, but the classes being extremely hard wasn’t a contributor to that. I can’t say what has helped me for grad school, other than the combination of everything I’ve done, and my goals that I outlined in my personal statement, so I can’t comment on strength of schedule or GPA benefits.

As far as weed-out classes go, I haven’t encountered any here, but as a ChemE at WashU, I was practically a pre-med. I think I was only missing 1 pre-med class. Because WashU is so pre-med and medicine focused, they have something that I would call weed-out classes (and maybe Columbia does as well, but since I had already taken them at WashU, I didn’t take them here). In particular, Bio 2960 (Bio 1) at WashU is what everyone thinks of as a weed-out class. You learn a lot in it, but the goal of the class is basically to study your butt off so that you really know the exact details of everything and can beat the curve on the exams. A lot of people seemed to drop out of pre-med or at least that class throughout the semester. I don’t think true weed-out classes (using your definition) where you learn nothing exist in the upper tiers of college education. That would basically be like scamming people out of their tuition, in my opinion. I imagine that they are more of a state school thing.

The professors at Columbia are much better at teaching, to a very noticeable extent, but are less approachable in general (hence why you have to sometimes be an a$$hole to get things done, which as I said was something I hate about Columbia, and it applies not just to the professors). However, this is just an overall difference, and I don’t think it’s that significant. I have gotten plenty of help from Columbia professors, but more professors at WashU were willing to help me. Furthermore, I had a couple really fantastic teachers at WashU, even though I say Columbia’s are better on average. The Japanese language program at WashU is incredible. It isn’t the most accelerated one, but it really taught me to think in the language, and I haven’t found anything like it anywhere else. I think it is largely because of the pedagogy in the textbook it uses, which is unpopular at other colleges, but I love it.

@planner03‌ You are correct. WashU was the best school I got into as a freshman. I almost went to UF honors, but at the last second (on May 2nd, actually - hey, that’s a pun!), I called up WashU and changed my mind, after my friends at school were all surprised that I was only going to go to UF. Since I had narrowed my choices down to UF and WashU, and UF was now out, I went to WashU. For the record, I was very excited for college and for WashU, as I’m sure most people are (a little too) excited about starting college. I wasn’t really sure where to apply as a freshman, so I applied to Harvard, MIT, Duke, WashU, Rice, Vanderbilt, U of Miami, UF, FSU, George Tech, and Tulane. I only got into WashU, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech (and waitlisted for the honors program), UF honors, FSU honors, Tulane honors, UM honors, and got waitlisted at Rice. My transfer list was much different and I meticulously chose each school that I applied to. I applied to Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, UPenn, Northwestern, Cornell, and Carnegie Mellon. While I’m at it, I’ll tell you that I got into Columbia, Penn, Northwestern (I think? I actually don’t remember. They got back to me really late, like in the summer after I had already accepted Columbia), and CMU.

I didn’t tour WashU or anything before accepting, by the way. I just accepted them because they were the highest ranked school I got into that my family could afford. I couldn’t afford GT or Vanderbilt, by the way. In retrospect, I should have thoroughly investigated every school I got into, including courses, research (which I didn’t know was a thing before college), various other opportunities, campus and what’s around campus of course, and a host of other factors like how many Nobel-laureates are affiliated with each school, what students mostly study, and opportunities in the surrounding area, etc (this is obviously a very incomplete list, and I’m not saying this is the formula for evaluating a college). Like many high school seniors, I was not sure how to evaluate universities or even how to decide where to apply, but I figured that out throughout the transfer application process, which was essentially 12 months long, so it was certainly a process.

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The original poster has a fair opinion, but then, it is just that… an opinion. I visited the dorms, the campus and also participated in discussions with students and counselors while doing the selection process for my kid. I have a completely different opinion about WashU. The environment is very collaborative while also maintaining a high class of academic rigor. Columbia does have the same, but the facilities - including the dorms - in Columbia are quite inferior compared to what WashU offers. In the field of traditional ChemE, yes, WashU certainly doesn’t cut it and therefore would not be a choice for that domain. But, on other aspects, particularly pre-med etc, WashU is easily up there.
Not only that, it is quite well recognized as a leader among those who understand pre-med. At the end of the day, every school has its hooks to the students… Depends which ones matter to you more.
One should never base their views on opinions of folks who have had some experiences, maybe as exceptions or could be termed in some cases as ‘sour grapes’, not that this OP is in that category.
Good luck to all students in making the choices that serve you the best.

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Do you have any idea how many students will transfer out of Wash U this year? 'Cause I’m a transfer applicant. That is the most thing I care. ;:wink: