Wash U - competitive but not cutthroat??

<p>I don’t know about it moving up in the rankings, or which rankings, since it has always done pretty well, but I thought I’d update since 2007. My son graduated in 2008, finished law school in 2 1/2 years, but returned to business, and is happily working in NYC. It did take awhile to get that job, but he has kept many of his Wash U friends and many are in NYC, and still speaks highly of his experience at Wash U.</p>

<p>WashU does a great job of looking for “nice” students when they go about shaping the incoming freshman class. I am from the east coast and am steeped in the Ivy League culture. I ultimately chose WashU because despite it’s growing global reputation and national relevance in elite higher education, it still manages to be an inclusive campus. Everyone is dedicated to same basic goals and academic success and recognizes that achieving said goal doesn’t come without collaboration. Every school has it’s own flavor, and WashU’s admissions department definitely goes to great lenghts to preserve the atmosphere of nice kids. Come to WashU.</p>

<p>Wash U has the normal amount of comp. tension but nothing like at other top school.</p>

<p>Why are we bumping such old threads?</p>

Why not? Wash U hasn’t been a regional university since early 1970’s. What everyone is missing here is Wash U used to be extremely competitive. When it wasn’t as well known despite very high test scores and pouncing on the Ivies, MIT and everyone else in North America in the Putnam Math Exam for the first half of the 1980’s Wash U was a pretty cutthroat place. Now that it is recognized as better university than about half the Ivies the students have relaxed. Now a low performing state NMF might Wash U a bit over their head but that’s not the same as cutthroat.