I spent all day at Georgetown yesterday meeting with current students, touring, observing classes, etc. I loved every minute and I’m going to apply early. There wasn’t a single thing about the school that I didn’t like, and everyone else had rave reviews about everything except Leo’s. So my question is: Is there anything about Georgetown (besides Leo’s) that you wish were different?
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I’ve been a student at Georgetown for a few years now and there are definitely a few downsides to it. I don’t regret coming here but (like most colleges) it’s not the idyllic paradise that college recruiting processes will make it sound like. My biggest beef with Georgetown isn’t that it’s bad, but that it’s very expensive and doesn’t offer too much more than the full-ride scholarships I had passed up at my state schools.
- You’re paying for the name and the people you meet.
The cost of college is something I wish I had thought of more before coming here. At $60,000 a year and no financial aid, there is almost no time that I don’t feel like Georgetown as a learning institution is one enormous scam. There are some good classes, but overall the education you receive will be mediocre to bad. My high school was better at teaching than Georgetown and cost orders of magnitude less. Less than 20% of my classes have been smaller than 30 people. In some of the larger classes (especially economics classes and computer science classes) the TAs for the classes will be undergraduate sophomores with no knowledge of the subject and no teaching skills. These classes will often have as many as 200 students in them and you will have little to no facetime with the professors. The only people who will ever interact with you personally are very young undergraduate students who often make simple mistakes, act petty or favor their friends. There is little oversight and almost no recourse for a bad TA giving bad grades. Further, many classes like this are prerequisite courses or gen-eds that you will be forced into taking so there is no way to dodge them. In short, grading is little more than a random number generator, small classes are awesome but you will almost never get to take them. Georgetown claims that a huge portion of their classes have fewer than 20 students but they fudge the numbers quite a bit by counting recitations as classes (so you have a big lecture with a professor and then a small group discussion with some rando leading it and 18 classmates). They also fudge the numbers by having a bunch of small foreign language classes taught by grad students and so heavily standardized that individual undergraduates are functionally invisible. The Spanish department is particularly awful in this respect - even though the classes are physically small - they are run in such an inflexible way that you might as well be in a lecture hall with 200 people for all the specific attention and directed education you receive.
Still, everyone at Georgetown is pretty bright. They are interested in the world, have amazing conversations and are well connected - especially if you are looking to crack into politics or foreign service.
- DC is absurdly expensive
I remember reading a report recently that $100 in DC is the equivalent of about $75 in the rest of the country. At Georgetown, which is in a particularly expensive neighborhood, I’d pin that at closer to $55-65. Even if you do manage to get a scholarship for a decent sum of money, you should keep in mind that cost of living may not be included in your scholarship and is pretty sizeable. I know many people on full financial aid who still need to work 20ish hours a week in order to cover incidental costs, eating expenses, textbooks, transit and other neccessites. The average cost of living in DC before housing comes into the calculations is almost $210 per week according to federal metrics. College students live cheaply, but it’s still a struggle to scrap up the change to live in this area week to week.
- The university will gouge you for money
On top of the cost of living in DC and the high tuition, Georgetown also manages to squeeze more money from their students at every turn. The mealplan for Leos is required for Freshmen and Sophomores and averages out to more than $15 per meal, especially given that meals don’t roll over from week to week and almost no one ends up using all of their meal swipes (if you eat at weird hours you may even have trouble using more than one meal swipe in the same day because Georgetown restricts the times you can return for a ‘second dinner’). Even in DC, better and healthier food can be found for that price. Housing costs are also absurd, students are required to live on campus for 3 years (and they are planning to eventually require on-campus living for all four years). The cost per bedroom on campus is almost $2,500 a month and as a freshman that gets you a single small room shared with a roommate, access to a communal bathroom that is often gross and hundreds of noisy and obnoxious neighbors. In comparison, the average cost per bedroom in private apartments less than a block from campus is $1,600ish and gets you your own kitchen, bathroom and utilities.
There’s a ton good about Georgetown I could mention but it’d be off topic. At the end of the day though, if I were to not come back to Georgetown the three reasons listed above would be my justification.
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While I agree with a lot in the above comment, namely that Georgetown nickel and dimes you, it is not hard at all to get individualized attention from professors. You just have to show up to office hours.
The main problems with Georgetown are
- The never ending construction and the complete lack of support given to students by current administration
- The highly competitive nature of the school. Essentially everything has an application attached to it and when you are looking for jobs, you will quickly find out the same 30 people get contacted for every job opportunity on the planet. It can be hard to get your name out there.
- The student body is becoming more inflexible and scared of communication. When I started here, conversations about difficult issues were incredibly easy to start. Nowadays, there is one acceptable view allowed and no one is allowed to deviate from that.
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It is called creating a “safe space” so that no one will be offended by hearing an opinion that they disagree with. It is not only at Georgetown.
What I’ve heard from my kid:
- Admin is not responsive to students.
- Very East Coast-centric. Yes, there are people from all over, but the critical mass are from the East Coast and seem to have little knowledge of life outside their little world.
- Amazingly wealthy people who seem unaware of their privilege.
- How competitive even joining a club can be.
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What I’ve heard from mine:
- Some facilities are dilapidated yet staff is busy replacing all the curvy bricks for straight bricks on the walkways. He wishes they would put more effort into things like doors that opened properly and elevators that worked.
- A lot of special attention is being given to MSB majors such that other students can feel slighted. For instance, everyone pays the same tuition, but MSB gets a special career counselor office and their shiny new building is only available to them after hours.
- Virtually no peers from the middle class. Either incredible wealthy kids or poor kids on scholarships.
- Same complaint as above commenter on computer science and language departments. He learns these subjects better on iTunes U.
- Non-existent music department. How can you have so many students who can play one or more musical instruments and yet the band and orchestras can be missing entire sections of instruments?
All that being said, he loves it and doesn’t regret his choice.
Oh, and one other thing I forgot to mention. He thinks the gym is too small for such a health-conscious campus. For the amount of money I pay in tuition, they need to have a better student rec center.
There are many valuable perspectives in this thread. Here’s my take on some of them:
- Like all private universities, Georgetown is more expensive than a state school for a full-paying student. Hence, it’s perfectly understandable for a full-paying student to wonder whether the benefit of attending Georgetown justifies this additional cost. Nevertheless, this reaction appears to the exception, rather than the rule, since Georgetown has a 96 percent freshman retention rate.*
- Of course, there may be no need for students on financial aid to address this cost-benefit analysis if there is no cost differential between Georgetown and their state school. Even if there is such a cost difference, Georgetown's first-year retention rate suggests that all applicable students overwhelmingly accept it. They presumably do so because the benefits and prestige of a Georgetown education justify this expense.
- As 38.2 percent of the students at Georgetown receive financial aid, and the average financial aid award is about $20,000 less than the total cost of attending,** it appears that a substantial number of students at Georgetown are neither very rich nor very poor.
- At a medium-sized university like Georgetown, there will obviously be a greater variance in class size than at a small, liberal arts college. Nonetheless, 60.8 percent of the classes at Georgetown have less than 20 students, 32.3 percent have between 20 and 49 students, and only 6.9 percent have 50 or more students.*** I don't know whether Georgetown counts discussion sections or labs towards its total of small classes. If it does, I suspect it's not an anomaly in this regard.
- As at any university, class size at Georgetown often depends on class selection. For example, a student in the College who chooses to take a first-year seminar, math, a foreign language, Writing, and Theology will have five small courses. Three of them will have between about ten to eighteen students; the remaining two will have about thirty students.
- Like its peer institutions, Georgetown does offer large, lecture classes. If my quick calculations are correct, most of the 6.9 percent of classes that have more than 50 students are introductory courses that range from about 70 to 150 students. These large classes, of course, typically break into small, discussion sections that meet once a week.
- As a previous poster correctly observes, the two introductory Economics courses are unduly large. This arises (I believe) because they are required for all Econ majors as well as all students in SFS and MSB. From what I have read, undergraduates, in the past, occasionally acted as TAs in these Introductory Econ courses. If that practice persists, it should end because even one undergraduate TA is too many, in my opinion.
- While the town of Georgetown is undeniably expensive, you get what you pay for because it’s one of the nicest places to live in America. Georgetown’s close proximity to Washington also creates a wealth of valuable internship and employment opportunities for Georgetown students.
- The highly competitive application process for many student organizations at Georgetown may be sui generis. The flip side is that some of these organizations provide uniquely valuable experiences. For example, the Corp and the Credit Union are each entirely student-run multi-million dollar enterprises. In any event, Georgetown students seem quite adept at creating an extra-curricular niche for themselves.
- From what I understand, excellent courses are widely available in the twelve or so foreign language courses taught at Georgetown. As at any school, finding the best course often requires detective work and carefully planning your schedule.
- Georgetown has an exciting men’s basketball team, but anyone expecting a big-time college football experience will likely be disappointed at Georgetown.
- While the gym could be better and there is always room for improvement in the physical facilities at Georgetown, a new gym is being built for varsity athletes, and there are a number of recently constructed and impressive buildings that serve the entire university community such as the Healey Family Center and the Leavey Center.
- http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/freshmen-least-most-likely-return/page+2 ** http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/georgetown-university-1445/paying *** http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/georgetown-university-1445/academics
Clubs here are extremely competitive. That should be a genuine concern of yours because everything (social life, internships, etc.) is contingent on clubs that are virtually impossible to get into. Example, this year Blue and Grey (the tour guides) received 500 student applications. Of those 500 applications, 100 hundred students received an interview for a total of 20 positions. If you are accepted to a school of equal or higher caliber, I would strongly recommend going to that school.
I’m not entirely sure how internships are contingent on clubs - I know maybe one person (a journalist who wrote for one of the papers) who I can say got their internship because of a selective club. But even that was based on experience, not through the club.
Clubs do play a big role in social life, but plenty of people socialize, throw parties, etc. outside of clubs.
There are long-term plans in the works to replace the student gym; in the short-term, moving all of the varsity athletes to their own facility next year should relieve some of the space/crowding issues in Yates now.
Couple of things I need to add:
- The MSB Career Office is for the MBA students, not undergrads, so that isn't really a major issue, although all students should be allowed in there after dark.
- All of the TAs in the intro econ courses are undergrads. I, being one of them, have never really found this as an issue because undergrad TAs do not teach classes but simply have office hours and recitations where students can ask questions.
- The competitiveness issue is a big deal though. I don't agree with the previous poster who said you should go to another school, because it is probably similar at other schools as well. However, the university allows some clubs to have a vast overrepresentation in Pre-Freshman activities, namely the Corp, Blue and Grey, and the Credit Union, which feeds into the competitiveness issue and these clubs are favored by the university as well.
- Internships and jobs can be continent upon clubs. Not only because of the networking opportunities, but a few firms, Mckinsey, for example, recruit almost exclusively from Hilltop Consultants, HMFI, the Carroll Fellows, and Baker and Krogh Scholars. Blackstone and a few of the banks also have special opportunities available for GUSIF and Credit Union students as well.
Hi! I know this is thread pretty old, but as a Gtown student I thought I would weigh in. Although it can certainly be annoying to be surrounded my so many clubs that you have to apply to get into, there are definitely other ways to get involved. It can seem like high-profile, competitive activities like the Corp, the Credit Union, Blue and Gray, and etc are very high profile and can seem like the end-all-be-all, there are SO many fun, accepting, non-competitive, and social clubs out there. Some examples are Rangila, club and intramural sports (some club teams do have cuts… but many don’t and all are great ways to meet people), campus ministry (freshmen… go on ESCAPE), Active Minds, and SO MANY MORE. Also, although some clubs might present unique opportunities to be recruited by particular companies, I can assure you that many people leave Gtown with gainful employment who are not in these particular clubs.
Just like any school, Georgetown absolutely has its flaws. At the end of the day, if you can manage the finances of it, you will receive an amazing education and have a unique experience at one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Not to mention the fact that I think Gtown is preferable over other top-notch universities because it is a Jesuit school (but I’m biased because I’m Catholic). Hope this is somewhat helpful :).
It’s definitely competitive in terms of academic success in curved classes (such as microecon) and apps to certain clubs. But socially it’s not that competitive. No one really talks about their grades, and I’ve very rarely heard others brag about high school accomplishments. The people who are super competitive become known for being like that. The few I can think of are not very well liked.
Also, I think it’s good that you already have an accurate idea of Leo’s haha
I visited Georgetown along with Barnard, Columbia, Penn, Michigan and UCLA. Georgetown felt the most “preppy” and the students on the whole seemed very affluent. I stayed over and this feeling was even stronger. At Columbia, many of the students talked about work-study etc., whereas at Georgetown you could feel the money.
Two other things struck me. Firstly, it didn’t feel very “Jesuit” as there was little discussion of Jesuit social thought, which is very progressive. That doesn’t bother me–I wasn’t seeking a religious college–but I thought I’d feel more of the intellectual inquiry associated with the Jesuits.
The other thing that struck me was how the moment I mentioned that I was applying to Ivy League universities too, everyone told me how Georgetown was just as good. Others bad mouthed Columbia and Penn. This struck me as evidencing profound insecurity. I don’t know if I want to go someplace where people feel compelled to broadcast how great their university is.
Finally, I was surprised at how small the actual campus is. Granted students live throughout the area, but the physical campus isn’ that large. I suppose I was expected Boston College or Notre Dame. Beautiful area all the same.
Most of my friends are on work-study, and my cousin, who goes to Columbia, has said he senses an atmosphere of affluence there. The price tags at these schools are both high and pretty much the same, so that’s unavoidable.
I agree with what Brexit said about the insecurity though. I definitely sense it. I also agree that the Jesuit emphasis is played up a little bit. (not in terms of being progressive though, the atmosphere is definitely liberal. Bernie Sanders has significant support on campus! hahaha)
Three points:
- The phenomenon of students attending a college after being denied admission to their top-choice Ivy League school isn’t, of course, unique to Georgetown. In fact, it’s quite common at top schools both outside and even inside the Ivy League. For example, a student at Wash U might regret not being accepted at Dartmouth just as a student at Dartmouth might wish he had been accepted at Harvard.
- Georgetown isn’t sui generis with respect to the wealth of its students. I read somewhere that only the top three percent of the wealthiest Americans can afford to send their children to private colleges without financial aid. That being the case, it is the norm, rather than the exception, for expensive private universities to have many full-pay students. The increase in financial aid at Georgetown will hopefully address this issue.
- Finally, I’d caution RA students against making definitive judgments about any school before they know their admission options. My niece, for example, initially hated Princeton. Then she fell in love with Princeton during its admitted student program and had a wonderful four years there. That’s why I encourage all RA admits to attend the GAAP Program at Georgetown if they can.
Good luck to everyone!
Most of the complaints are trivial, but the real big one is club exclusivity. I simply was not prepared to have to apply to clubs that literally take one to two people every semester out of 500 applicants (Lecture Fund), or to be rejected from the Hoya after being the EIC of my high school paper, or to be rejected four times from being an UNPAID, totally volunteer tour guide.
I posted when this was first started last fall, but I’ve learned about another issue on campus. The mental-health resources are inadequate. They just hired a couple more counselors, but the number of free visits is well below what other colleges offer. In my mind, it’s a reflection of the wealth of the community. People just go to private counselors because they can afford it so it’s another way in which the low-income kids on campus get shorted because of the overall wealth of the population. I’m not sure I’ve worded that precisely, but I hope you get the drift.
The club exclusivity issue is a real problem and something that people from my school who attend Georgetown mention frequently. At most universities, the majority of clubs are open to all those interested. Georgetown has instead made many the equivalent of membership societies. The other bad thing about Georgetown is financial aid. The meet full “demonstrated need” but compared to the Ivies and other highly selective universities, they hit you with far more loans. This is especially true if you are not low income.
Brexit99 hit the nail on the head with the preppiness factor. Georgetown can often seem preppier even than the Harvards and Yales of the world, which is saying something. This may or may not be a plus, depending on your crowd. And of course it does not alter the quality of the education for better or worse.