I was just accepted into the college for biology (pre-med) and I am considering transferring from Emory but I am wondering if I could get current student/alum’s opinions since I’ve never actually visited Georgetown (I didn’t apply out of high school because it was Catholic school and at the time I didn’t want to do that/didn’t know what it entailed.) I’m wondering if things would be that different at Georgetown and if it would be worth leaving everything I have at Emory (friends, lab job, extracurriculars)
A few of the things I don’t like about Emory:
There’s not a lot of school spirit. It seems like everyone feels like they settled for Emory. If you ask a student how they like Emory, a common after is “It’s okay.” It’s just kind of hard to be in a place where it seems like everyone would rather be somewhere else. Since it’s D3 with no football team, no one goes to sporting events so that doesn’t really help the mood around campus. I also LOVE college basketball so that’s a bummer. I see a lot of other college apparel rather than Emory’s own.
Atlanta is not that easy to maneuver around, especially without a car (I'm from Colorado so I don't think I would bring one down) and even with a car, Atlanta traffic is terrible. As a result of this and Emory being in a suburb, it feels like I've moved from one bubble to another. There are a lot of cool things to do but they are not that accessible, especially without careful planning.
I don't think the level of education I'm receiving from the faculty is worth the tuition. I've had one horrendous graduate student, a chemistry professor who doesn't have his PhD in chemistry and other fine professors. Emory is a great school and I think it's a good fit academically for me in terms of rigor. But I feel like I learned most of the curriculum by myself, which is fine because that's what college is and that's what medical school will be like but I don't like that Emory didn't offer recitations as another outlet to get help. I attended office hours but they were usually packed with other students so I didn't end up receiving the help I desired. Also, Emory offered mentoring sessions and tutoring taught by other undergraduates, but sometimes they were only a year older and I often left each session more confused than I came.
Seemingly lack of diversity. Emory is statistically diverse but it doesn't feel like it. The internationals understandably hang out with other internationals so there goes a big part of the diversity. It's also incredibly Jappy. There is a big rich kid from the east coast vibe, especially Westchester, New Jersey or Long Island. Don't get me wrong I love my friends at Emory and everyone is very nice.
There's going to be construction on campus for the rest of my time since they're building a new main dining hall. That just kinda sucks.
Going off of that, the food is terrible as I imagine most college dining halls are, but there are not very many options outside the main dining hall except a bad, expensive, coffee place that has a monopoly on campus. The late night options are next to nothing, especially on weekends.
Concerns about Georgetown:
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Competitive clubs. I’ve read that it’s really difficult to get involved. This concerns me as at Emory, you can just join any club you want as a general body member and exec boards tend to be more competitive to get a position in.
Food. I’ve also read that Leo’s sucks but I’m wondering how the options other than the main dining hall are.
Research opportunities. Emory is pretty well known in the medical and research community, while Georgetown is more well known overall. Are there still a lot of opportunities to get into labs at Georgetown?
Any input would be greatly appreciated! And this is just my personal experience, so don’t let it influence your view of Emory as a whole (@ prospective students)
Hi, just wanted to put my two cents in. I’m enrolling as a freshman this fall, but I’ve been on campus enough to answer some of your questions.
So I’m a Jewish girl from Long Island, and I think what a lot of people who aren’t from there don’t realize that we are not homogeneous! New York is actually more diverse than any other place in the United States. I don’t think you know what jappy stands for as well- “Jewish American Princess.” Because Georgetown is a Jesuit school, I don’t think you’d see too much of that. Yes, there are gonna be a bit of prep school white Christian kids going there, but the kids I’ve met at Georgetown are not all like that. I’m not like that and I fall into the “jap” category that you find really bad. You’ll find your niche, but if the slight east coast prep school vibe really bothers you, maybe Georgetown is not a fit.
As for food, Leo’s is getting extensive renovations this summer. This includes changing the caterers and adding new restaurants, so I heard it’s gonna be a lot better. But besides that, there are a few other restaurants on campus, like Epicurean, a burger place, and the Corp- a coffee shop that’s really cheap. There’s also tons of places within a mile radius in the town of Georgetown if you want more variety.
I was also concerned about the competitive clubs, but then I found out that only three of over a hundred clubs on campus are like that - the tour guides, the credit union (basically a student run bank), and the Corp (another student run business that includes the coffee shop). They’re competitive because they pay the students that are in them and just don’t have that many positions for the level of interest. Everything else is either walk-on or accepts most of the applicants. Frankly, none of the competitive clubs interest me - I want to join the orchestra and do some stuff in theatre and writing, and maybe join the college democrats.
I don’t know too much about science research since I’m going into the school of foreign service, so hopefully someone else can answer that. From what I’ve heard from current students, Georgetown is very generous with funding research projects and study abroad for research purposes.
@rebecca12345 i appreciate the input! and also wanted to clarify I didn’t mean to come off as derogatory/insulting, I was mostly referring to the stuck up type of attitude! Super sorry for generalizing and if I offended anyone!!!
I’m a rising sophomore here so let me offer my two cents. I’ll take each of your points and offer my take:
On things you don’t like about Emory:
I think Georgetown has pretty good school spirit. It’s not all around sports (though basketball is huge; Hoya Blue is a spirit club that goes to all the games and it’s not competitive at all). For many people, Georgetown was their first choice; for others, it wasn’t. But almost everyone here really seems to like it and be proud of going here.
DC is a terrific city and generally not very hard to get around. The one issue I will point out is that Georgetown does not have a metro stop; however, this issue is mitigated by the GUTS buses which transport you to two nearby metro stops free of charge. Ubering is also common to get around DC, but no one brings a car with them.
I think the professors here mostly range from good to fantastic. In my own experience, I’ve had 10 professors so far, and only one struck me as below-average; all the others were at least good if not great. That also varies by department. For example, the government department is unsurprisingly outstanding. The science/pre-med classes tend to be very difficult according to the people in those programs, but I’ve never heard many complaints about the professors themselves.
If you come to Georgetown hoping for a very diverse campus, I admittedly think you will be a bit disappointed. That being said, the racial/ethnic makeup of the school is actually not that different from that of the US as a whole. The socioeconomic diversity is lacking though: the recent NYT report said that 20% of Georgetown students come from the top 1%. There are many clubs and organizations on campus committed to fostering diversity, though, such as Leaders in Education About Diversity (LEAD), as well as the Women’s Center, LGBTQ Center, Center for Social Justice (CSJ), and Center for Multicultural Equity and Access (CMEA).
Georgetown has construction, but I think most campuses do. In any event, I’m not aware of the type of long-term project that you mention is happening at Emory.
The food situation at Georgetown has not been great, but we did recently sign on to a new 10-year contract that will hopefully improve things. With the new contract, we’ll have two food courts and an all-you-can-eat section on the meal plan. There are also student-run coffee shops and a salad place run by the Corp, as well as a 24/7 restaurant called Epi that is very popular for late nights/weekends.
Concerns about Georgetown:
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I think this point is overhyped. A very small portion of the hundreds of clubs on campus are known for being competitive, and more often than not they’re only selective because having more people would be superfluous. For example, the Corp is competitive, but that’s because they only need (and can only afford) so many people working at their coffee shops, not just because they feel like rejecting people. I’m not in one of the stereotypically competitive clubs (The Hoya, The Corp, Blue and Gray, and GUASFCU come to mind) but I’ve had a vibrant social life regardless. The other nice thing about the social life here is we don’t have Greek life, which I think is a huge plus.
Like I said above, the food does suck, but I am cautiously optimistic that it will be better with the new dining contract.
I’m not pre-med so I can’t speak to that specifically, but I know that in the social sciences, it’s not hard to become a research assistant if you want to. I would imagine that it’s similar in the hard sciences, but I’m not the most credible source on that.