WashU parents

Colleges and Universities A-Z Washington University in St. Louis
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<p>My daughter was just admitted ED. We're all thrilled! Congratulations to everyone who was admitted. I want this thread to be as sort of a question and answer place where new parents or students can go and ask questions about WashU. So instead of creating a new thread every time, we can just have this going. For example I asked a question about banks on campus. There's a Bank of America.<br>
My sons school CC forum has a thread like this that was created few years back and gets resurrected every year for new parents. People go there to ask 'how to get from airport to campus', 'what banks are on campus'. And anything else they need to know. </p>

<p>So I'll start then. My son goes to college a driving distance away. So before start of freshman year we just drove all his stuff over in a big SUV and before summer bring everything home again. This is my first experience with the school being so far away that you have to fly. Can anyone talk about logistics of getting your kid's stuff to WashU and where to keep it during summer. I'm sure I'll have loads of more questions but let's start with that. Thanks everyone. </p>

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<p>Okay - I’ll go first! :)</p>

<p>See Wash U’s First Year Center: <a href=“Campus Resources | Parents & Families | Washington University in St. Louis”>http://firstyear.wustl.edu/ParentAndFamilyResources/Pages/default.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Wash U’s first year center is really informational for first year students such as moving, advising, orientation, storage, etc. </p>

<p>We drove to Wash U like you did for your son so we didn’t ship anything. However, we saw lots of other families ship their goods and they even picked up their stuff at Target, Bed Bath, Container Store, etc. in Clayton which is just 10 minutes away.</p>

<p>Also see the following URL on transportation between the airport and Wash U: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/washington-university-st-louis/1652520-transportation-from-stl-airport-to-campus.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/washington-university-st-louis/1652520-transportation-from-stl-airport-to-campus.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Congratulations to your daughter.</p>

<p>Wash U parents are great! The school will be sending a list of parents in your state to contact for all the zillions questions that you might have (I did). Last year, many Wash U parents also hosted informal receptions to familiarize new parents with the transition. There is also a first year web site with all the info you need to plan ahead.</p>

<p>Book your flights, car and hotel early. Move in was a breeze for us. Wash U students carried ALL of D’s belongings all the way to the 3rd floor. </p>

<p>By the way, your screen name was my first choice :)) , seconded by worriedtoomuch but I was too late! Anway, our names said it all. </p>

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<p>We live a plane flight away and used this service for 4 years: <a href=“University Trucking”>http://utrucking.com/index.asp&lt;/a&gt; You pack your stuff into boxes and WashU students will come with a big truck and pick it up and deliver it to your child’s dorm room. There are options where you can bring your boxes to a central location in area or, for an extra payment, in some areas they will come to your house. At the end of the year he packed up the stuff and they delivered the boxes back to us. That way, he didn’t have to take more than one suitcase on the plane. I found the cost reasonable.</p>

<p>My son is a recent graduate of WashU, and I can tell you that your children are in for a wonderful experience! My daughter will be applying RD this year.</p>

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<p>@momworried‌, First, I recall reading one of your earlier posts where you indicated that you expressed a preference to have your daughter stay back east near home. I understand that completely. Although we are within a 4 hour drive of Wash U, we have had to deal with our other daughter attending a school over 1k miles away. If it is any consolation, I want to tell you that the Wash U experience is like no other. Our family has been, and continues to be, amazed at the cooperative, collaborative atmosphere that pervades the school–the students, faculty and administration. Everything is designed and implemented with the students in mind. I’m confident that your daughter’s choice will be one that is rewarding to both her and her family back home, despite the distance. Welcome!</p>

<p>With respect to your questions, I can second what others have said, especially the suggestion to pre-order stuff online from Bed, Bath and Beyond and the other chain housewares stores to have ready for pick-up at their local stores in Clayton. There are several colleges in the area–WUSTL, Fontbonne, Webster, SLU, even Mizzou kids shop here–so the stores are completely used to dealing with dorm needs and frazzled moms during the last 2 weeks of August. Things can and do run out of stock. This year it was mini-fridges. Had to drive 20 miles out to get one! But still a good way to go from a logistics perspective. I’m sure there are summer storage options; I don’t know what they might be since we live within driving distance.</p>

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<p>Could someone elaborate on the points meal system? It seems really stressful. So is it basically just like having cash on a card and then you have to individually “purchase” every item that you eat like at a restaurant? Does every meal turn into financial gymnastics? It seems freshman have enough to worry about without calculating the cost of every meal. How common is it to run out of money?</p>

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<p>I got the gold plan, which is the highest meal plan, for my daughter for the first semester because I didn’t want her to worry about it. With about 4 more days to go she has a little over 300 dollars left in her account. This will transfer to next semester and she can drop down to a lower level for next semester. If you’ve run out of money you can use bear bucks or your credit card. It isn’t complicated. It’s actually pretty easy to use and you can see your activity on webstac if you want. </p>

<p>Yes you start with a balance and it gets deducted for everything you buy. </p>

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<p>The meal points system is not stressful at all and it’s really very simple. In short, there’s no reason to ever get anything other than the lowest meal plan available.</p>

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<p>newjersey - I strongly recommend she drops down to the lowest level. Any points left over are literally money down the drain that you can’t get back. (And there’s literally nothing she has to do to use bear bucks instead of point if she runs out because the changeover is automatic).</p>

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<p>This thread is so helpful! Thanks for starting it. Does anyone have experience with the Freshman Summer Academic Program, SOAR and the Pre-Orientation Programs? </p>

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<p>Thanks Johnson. Are the bear bucks refundable or can they be used for all four years? </p>

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<p>I just read on the WUSTL website that first year students are required to purchase no less than the Silver Plan.</p>

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<p>Bear Bucks are 100% refundable for all 4 years & carry over year to year. And they reimburse you if you have anything in your account after you graduate (I think I got a check in the mail for like $3 or something ridiculous).</p>

<p>On this note - if your kid ever moves off campus still drop to the lowest option (it’s called the “off-campus plan”) - he/she will likely burn through it (I always did) but as I said you can switch over to bear bucks.</p>

<p>Also, when I was a 5th year I was technically classed as a grad student (wustl engineering bs/ms) and had 0 requirement to pay either the student activities fee (well, there’s a grad school one but it was like $10 and it paid for beer events on campus so I wasn’t complaining…) or get a meal plan at all. It was great.</p>

<p>Also also, always buy food on campus with bear bucks (ie when my parents visited I paid for them with bear bucks/meal points depending on what year it was) because if you pay with cash/credit they charge you tax (it’s tax free with points/bear bucks).</p>

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<p>Thank you for the tips!<br>
My daughter attended SOAR. I would recommend it because it gives you time to meet with other students, learn your way around on campus, and you get to sign up for classes too. My daughter didn’t want to come home. Funny. </p>

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<p>Pre-orientation- my son did the Leadership pre-orientation. It was not his first choice so he was a bit down about it going in. Don’t get caught up in getting your first choice, but simply participate in pre-o to acclimate and get to know other students. After attending, he loved the pre-o. It allows you to meet other Freshmen in a small group setting. It also allowed him to move-in early which he really liked. Students can acclimate to campus and they feel like they have a group going in. Being able to move-in during pre-o is a huge benefit logistically. Especially if it is 105 degrees in August!</p>

<p>Residential Colleges - Washu does an outstanding job of making students feel like they fit in from the moment they arrive on campus. My son is in Liggett-Koenig res college and loves it. Each res college has their own mascot, cheers, etc. this helps students have a sense of group identity the moment they step on campus. You truly get a strong sense of this at convocation. I weeped tears of joy at convocation seeing what an awesome time my son was having. He enjoyed his res college so much Freshman year, that he stayed there sophomore year. Not sure where he’ll go next year. Last I heard, he would like to be an RA for his res college.</p>

<p>Convocation- if at all possible attend convocation! My biggest regret is that we did not take our 10th grade daughter with us! Get to convocation early as it is a full house. Be sure to participate in all the post convocation activities! My husband and I truly enjoyed this experience. </p>

<p>Meal plan- My son is a hearty eater. He had Silver level Freshman year and didn’t use it all. It is a restaurant style pricing system, but our son has never went hungry and has never worried about running out of points/bucks. I just asked hubby about our meal plan for Sophomore year, and he confirmed son is on the bronze plan and has 55 points left for semester. So bronze is a much better fit for DS. </p>

<p>Summer storage - u trucking is the bomb.com. Love it! Your kid boxes up their items in their room, labeling them for either storage or to ship home. U trucking picks up the items from your room, ships them home and/or stores them for the summer. DS stored most of his items, but shipped home two large boxes of dirty laundry. :slight_smile: when it was time to go back for the fall semester, u trucking had all of DS’s storage boxes in his room ready for him to unpack when he arrived on campus. </p>

<p>Shopping in Clayton - If you can, pre-order items at Bed, Bath, and Beyond or Target to be picked up. The Target in Clayton is a college super store. They definitely know their market. There is also an office store near the Target, maybe an OfficeMax? We picked up a few things like extra ink for his printer, etc. that we didn’t find at Target. </p>

<p>Hotels, airfare, etc. - make your reservations early. </p>

<p>Amtrak - our son used Amtrak for travel to and from home several times freshman year when airfare was outrageous. I think Spring break week was the most costly airfare prices we experienced. He used the metro to get to and from Amtrak station. </p>

<p>Airport - our son used a shuttle service that students could sign up for, for air travel. Very easy and reliable. Low cost. I think the shuttle service is a student owned business if my memory serves me correctly. </p>

<p>Congrats on your acceptance! I hope your child enjoys it as much as my son! Let me know if I can be of help. Of course, each students experience is unique, so your mileage may vary! Happy planning!</p>

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<p>newcrew42 Thank you so much for all the helpful tips!!</p>

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<p>@newjersey17 That information actually concerns me more than it reassures me. If a girl only has $300 left on the highest plan I fear my son that eats nonstop is going to run into big trouble.</p>

<p>@ravnzcroft lol, well I do understand the concept that if you run out of money and want more food you can buy it, so if money isn’t a concern I suppose it isn’t stressful.</p>

<p>@newcrew42 Does your S eat a lot of meals off the plan? Is that why he doesn’t spend much?</p>

<p>I guess the points plan is good for weight control and preventing the freshman 15…I do wonder what happens to a kid on FA that runs out of points and doesn’t have any money to buy food though?</p>

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<p>@planner03 sorry I thought my daughter was on the highest plan. She isn’t. There is one higher. It gives a description of what the plans mean and who they recommend it for. I’m going to move my D down to silver and then if she needs more money, I’ll just put the money on her bear bucks account. She uses that for her laundry, book store and sometimes off campus restaurants. </p>

<p>By the way, my D has lost weight because she walks about 2 miles each day! :)</p>

<p>She will have about $300 to carry over to next semester so that’s why I’m going to move her down. It looks like the silver is $760 less a semester so it will even out. Now, I’m trying to figure out how to do it… :)</p>

<p>I actually think it is kind of nice they have different options because everyone is different. <a href=“Meal Plans | Dining Services | Washington University in St. Louis”>http://diningservices.wustl.edu/meal-plans/undergraduate/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>@planner03‌ </p>

<p>There are literally only two types of freshmen I knew of that ran out of meal points: football players & those who bought coffee daily (not a large population percentage). Not like I was privy to everyone’s financial circumstances, but the students I knew who came from poor backgrounds had very generous fa packages that included meal plans.</p>

<p>For upperclassmen, it was kind of an in-joke that freshmen would buy food for them when they ran out of points. I went to ibbys more than once and got a steak dinner because a freshman had 500+ points they wanted to burn in april/may (I myself as a freshman did the ibby’s thing and I think collectively we tipped our waiter $200). Or bears den. I had underclassmen friends I’d call up and say “hey lets hang. bring me food from bd on your way”.</p>

<p>The bronze plan should be more than enough for any student living on campus unless you’re eating 4000 calories/ buying coffee every day (at that point buy a coffee machine…). And quite frankly, if money is a struggle and you’re choosing to live on campus & are buying coffee every day, I can’t really find much sympathy.</p>

<p>I’ve posted about this before; you can cut your living expenses by more than half if you move off campus to non-washu owned housing and then the point concern you have becomes obsolete because you’ll be on the off-campus plan anyway and supplementing by buying groceries. I had a roommate who was on a very strict budget - as I understand it, her FA package did not change when we moved off-campus - they just sent her checks rather than it being wasted by paying for washu housing, so she saved a boat load of money.</p>

<p>For a numbers reference, my junior year the cheapest off-campus washu-owned apt was $10k if you didn’t want to share a bedroom with someone, and the cheapest meal plan was $650 (but you still had to supplement that with groceries). So lets say it would have cost $12k for room/board for 9 months of the year. On campus was far more than that (ie village east; see also, the new loop lofts). Instead, I got a 3 bdrm apt for $450 a month/each, ($5400 for the year), spent maybe $200/month on food/dining out/off-campus meal plan. So $7800/year (note: 12 months, not the 9 reslife restricts you to). If you sublet during the summer, that’s comparing $5850 to $12k. No brainer in my book, and money really was not a factor in my decision (you could be a LOT more frugal than I was).</p>

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<p>@planner03‌ </p>

<p>To add on to this if you’re still super concerned about a freshman - there’s a meal point exchange for students that have bronze/silver/gold/platinum plans.</p>

<p>You just have to go into dining services with a friend who has a ton and trade for them (there’s a point surcharge for doing this though). It’s not uncommon for people to sell meal points for 50cents or even less this way (so even cheaper than using bear bucks).</p>