<p>My (east-coast) family just returned from a visit to Wash U. Here are some of my thoughts:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Nicest campus I've seen. Nicer than Cornell, Colgate or Vassar which are famous for great campuses. It's almost too nice and borders on seeming like a country club. S's mother actually made the observation that it's a bit too plush and that a college should have some "grit to it."</p></li>
<li><p>The area of St. Louis that surrounds to school is very, very upscale. Million-dollar homes, etc. There are some rough areas of STL, but apparently not around the campus.</p></li>
<li><p>The park that abuts the campus is absolutely magnificent.</p></li>
<li><p>The metrolink trains (that all students get a free pass for) is clean and convenient and looks like it takes you anywhere you might need to go.</p></li>
<li><p>This school is very lacking in diversity. Their idea of diversity seems to be to have many different types of white people. The food service and grounds staff are all black and this "balance" (or lack of it) really re-enforces the country-club feeling. So not only does it feel like a county club, it feels like a restricted one. This is about the only thing about the school that disturbed me. It was by far the least diverse school we've seen.</p></li>
<li><p>Everybody is super-nice and friendly, faculty, staff, other students, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Lot's of east coast and west coast kids here.</p></li>
<li><p>The info session was all wrong! The admissions staff member was a giggling airheaded ditz and since it was a session specifically for admitted seniors I was expecting a "why you should come to Wash U." type session. Instead I got a "how do you manage the transition from HS to Wash U. session." She basically assumed everybody was enrolling! It might have been the worst info session I've attended (and again, I've been to lots of them in the past year).</p></li>
<li><p>The tour guide was a kid (freshman) from NYC and he was excellent and very, very informative.</p></li>
<li><p>Frats don't really seem like that big a deal and it looks like the 30% figure that they quote is accurate.</p></li>
<li><p>The food is outstanding.</p></li>
<li><p>The dorms are too nice (really, I think I was well into my 30s before I lived in an apartment as nice as the WashU dorms).</p></li>
<li><p>One thing to keep in mind if you are interested in studying music: a large chunk of the music department is located in a building off campus. There is a shuttle bus which takes you there, but it does give you a bit of an "exiled" feeling. Also unless you are a declared music major (not a minor), music performance instruction will cost you extra $$'s.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>On balance it was a very positive experience. S is still not decided where to enroll despite having ten days to make a decision!</p>
<p>I think that asian populations skew these numbers. There were virtually no black students (that I could see) at Wash U. There were black students in noticeable quantities at the other schools we visited. That being said, I still am having a hard time believing the 44% non-white number from Wash U.</p>
<p>I don’t know why, but I also felt like Wash U wasn’t very diverse! Maybe I was expecting too much because many have boasted about Wash U’s diversity. </p>
<p>I went during Multicultural Weekend, but when I looked past the prefroshes and at the actual students…all I really saw was just whites and asians.</p>
<p>Soze, as I mentioned in my PM, I’m sure my son “will find it”. That’s an important component in his college vetting process and he never mentioned it, much less anything to the lack thereof.</p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is how colleges define diversity. We have friends whose son applied to college as a Hispanic. He looks like he just stepped out of a Viking movie, but his dad was born in Cuba. So, technically, he is Hispanic, but it isn’t like he suffered any discrimination in his educational career because of that. It was a win/win for him and the school–he got in (with a lot of finaid, because his self employed parents had a down year) and they school got to tick off having admitted a Hispanic student.</p>
<p>So while it may look mighty white, for statistical purposes it may not be so.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the city of St. Louis is over 50 percent African American, so if a random sample of people were hired (this is not the case, socio-economic factors are also at play here) then there would be over 50 percent African Americans working for the food services by chance alone. Also, this is not exclusive to Wash U, many of the food service workers around the St. Louis City area are also African American. This may not be true in Clayton (also socio-economic reasons) but outside of the county (the wealthy area) this is definitely the case. I don’t see the problem here, Wash U offers all of it’s workers (to professors to food staff to those who clean the buildings) good wages and employee benefits. Also, people don’t look at the NBA and say it’s racist because most of its players are Black.</p>
<p>@lollybo
Don’t get me wrong… I really, really liked WashU.</p>
<p>But (and hear me out here), if you see an African-American walking around campus, it appeared much more likely that they were a food service worker than a student…that’s the part that bugged me a little (and only a little). I totally get the whole demographic thing, etc.</p>
<p>I’ve visited a lot of campuses in the past year or so, and this is really the only one that seemed overly white to me…again it’s not based on any actual stats, just the vibe I got.</p>
<p>I don’t think for one minute that the school is racist, I’m assuming they are doing whatever they can to attract a diverse student body, etc.</p>
<p>You are correct regarding the service staff, but when I usually walk around on campus I notice an even mix of students. I guess it depends on where you go. When eating at peak times, I definitely see an even distribution.</p>