<p>I know why I do. It is the pre-med, and all that good stuff. </p>
<p>How about you?</p>
<p>bears basketball
beautiful people - inside and out 
beautiful st. louis
overall sexiness</p>
<p>oh and the bunny</p>
<p>my friends there get a crapload of action.</p>
<p>I can think of remarkably few reasons why not. Therefore, I’ll spare you the long list. Two things I didn’t like:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>We’ll drive out there just once for move-in my freshman year, and that’s a long, expensive 16+ hours. It’s also an extremely boring drive.</p></li>
<li><p>There could be a better selection of healthier food.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>its ranked above hopkins, brown, cornell :)</p>
<p>resssssseearch beasts</p>
<p>USNWR report rankings are nice, but take them with a grain of salt.
WashU is wonderful; it’s absolutely one of my favorite schools in the U.S. But on a purely academic level, don’t believe for a minute that it is superior to Hopkins, Brown and Cornell, because it’s not.
The USNWR rankings mix a lot of factors, and the weight they give to each factor is, in my opinion, somewhat arbitrary. I would pay the closest attention to “Peer assessment,” which concerns how academics from other institutions regard the academic strength of the school being rated. WashU’s score on that front is very high, but it’s not as high as the other three schools named, or even as high as its co-#12, Northwestern. So if you want to regard the USNWR ratings as important, then these 4 schools should be considered academically superior to WashU. But the undergrad experience should be a mix of lots of important things, so like I said, don’t take these rankings (or any part thereof) too seriously.</p>
<p>living in america is awesome. so many great schools to choose from =)</p>
<p>Also, I’m pretty sure drinks were free, or readily stolen. There were unattended fountain machines everywhere. And I’m 98% positive the water was free, at least. This is a revelation. Score ten for WashU’s forward thinking.</p>
<p>WCASParent, while I don’t disagree with you that the rankings should be taken with a grain of salt, I think it is poor advice to recommend using the Peer assessment alone to rank schools.
The peer assessment is a purely subjective rating which is subject to an enormous amount of preconceived perceptions within academia. Yes, it does mirror prestige ratings and it does to some degree reflect academics’ assessment of other academics but it misses alot of the elements that make a great school great. The USNews rating system, for all its faults, has attempted to combine a number of the factors that contribute to a great school. It’s wonderful when a university is able to fill it’s departments with well respected researchers, however when those researchers have little interest in teaching and undergraduates are subject to huge classes taught by TA’s, the student benefits very little from those “prestige” professors, while the peer assessment soars. </p>
<p>The quality of academics within a school is made up of a number of factors, such as class size, professors vs. TA’s teaching, quality of teaching facilities, dedication to undergraduates, caliber of fellow students…etc. Peer Assessment is just one piece of the pie.</p>
<p>good post nervous1</p>
<p>nervous1 -
I absolutely agree that class size, student-faculty ratio, percentage of classes being taught by profs vs TAs, and several other factors are extremely important, and I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. My point was that some of the factors in the mix, and especially the percentage of the total “score” allotted to the each factor, are dubious and arbitrary. I personally pay the most attention to “Peer assessment” (and I think it gets 25% of the total score, which is probably the highest percentage of any factor), but I didn’t mean to suggest it was the be-all and end-all. By way of example, there’s not a doubt in my mind that on pure academic strength, divorced from everything else, JHU should rank higher than WashU, but if I had to choose between those two schools for one of my kids, there’s not a chance in the world that I would pick JHU over WashU. JHU’s total mix of what the undergrad experience offers is not nearly as appealing to me as WashU’s. Similarly, UChicago gets a higher “peer assessment” rating than Northwestern, but the same would apply: not a snowball’s chance in Hell that I’d send my kid to Chicago over NU (a point supported, by the way, by a friend who has been both a student and a teacher at Chicago and knows both schools well).<br>
So I absolutely do NOT recommend using the Peer Assessment rating “alone” either to rank or to choose schools. My point was more that the USNWR rankings (like others, especially the Forbes ranking, which is kind of ridiculous) should not be taken as gospel, and certainly should not be taken as evidence that School A is “better” than School B just because it’s a place or two (or three or four) above School B in the USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>Fair enough WCASParent! Lets now respond to the OP and help him/her with why someone would want to go to WashU!</p>
<p>There are lots of old threads addressing this, but here’s a start…</p>
<p>Great Academics all taught by professors (not TA’s)
A top research university with opportunities for and a commitment to undergraduates
Beautiful mid-sized campus with a rich campus life
Super smart, involved, active student body
Not cut-throat. A warm, midwestern atmosphere.
Easy Access to Forest Park, the Loop, the Central West end, malls and restaurants galore
Great dorms and food service</p>
<p>What’s wrong with Chicago?</p>
<p>I was there for discovery weekend and lived in the dorms for a few days. the people there are absolutely amazing. someone above said beautiful inside and out, and I definitely agree; I have honestly never met nicer or more open or more friendly people in my life!</p>
<p>I was up there for 5 weeks this summer for the high school summer scholars program. I took Business Ethics and Great Philosophers while I was up there.</p>
<p>All of our RA’s (ranging from sophomores to just graduated) were some of the coolest people I’ve met.</p>
<p>The loop has a massive selection of restaurants, and that’s just one street in St. Louis.</p>
<p>Free, unlimited cherry coke in the DUC (ask for a water cup, they’ll give you a fountain drink cup usually (if not doesn’t matter), fill it up with whatever you like; free refills); oh, and there’s an Xbox360 and Wii upstairs for your convenience.</p>
<p>According to the RAs, food sucked during the summer because a lot of the places on campus were closed. The DUC had pretty good hamburgers, grilled quesadillas, Chinese, amazing coffee and doughnuts…I can’t imagine what it’s like during the year. (Granted Applicannot, I got no vitamins for my entire 5 week stay; bring supplements :P)</p>
<p>Forest Park is stunningly beautiful. There’s also a great art museum and a huge zoo, both free, right up the hill from Forest Park. If I get accepted, the first thing I hope to do when I get up there is go chill in the park. (partly for the nostalgia) [<a href=“http://users.seas.wustl.edu/cdbutler/Photos/20060527-057.jpg[/url]”>http://users.seas.wustl.edu/cdbutler/Photos/20060527-057.jpg</a>]</p>
![http://users.seas.wustl.edu/cdbutler/Photos/20060527-057.jpg[/url]](http://users.seas.wustl.edu/cdbutler/Photos/20060527-057.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>The campus looks, and feels, amazing.</p>
<p>The community is pretty liberal. I don’t know if they’re die-hard liberal like NYU, but they are liberal. Obama was going to speak at the campus during his campaign (had to call it off for some reason). This could be a minus for some, but in my opinion, it’s good to get out of a conservative shell/indoctrination during your college years and see what all is out there.</p>
<p>The modern dorms are great. Can’t speak for traditional dorms; we each had singles (in 4 room suites) in an upperclassman house.</p>
<p>Philosophy-neuroscience-psychology major.</p>
<p>Strong philosophy and pre-med departments.</p>
<p>Extremely easy to change majors or schedule etc. I’ve read about some schools where it’s almost impossible to change majors. At WashU you can change on a whim.</p>
<p>A lot of people discredit WashU’s sports because they aren’t a D1 school, but they compete very well in the D3 bracket. (#1 volleyball, #1 men + women’s basketball, #3 men’s tennis)</p>
<p>Good medium sized student body (6000 undergraduates).</p>
<p>Coke-Cola affiliated school! I guess if you’re not a coke-cola person this might suck, but personally I love Coke-Cola and all of its varieties more than anything else. Every university I’ve visited so far has been Pepsi affiliated, so this was definitely the icing on the cake for me.</p>
<p>That’s about all I can come up with for now, but it’s an amazing school. I was pretty sure I wanted to go there before I visited for the program, but there was absolutely no doubt after the program.</p>
<p>Reading that just reminded me why I so loved WashU when I went for Discovery Weekend. It also helped to calm my nerves for the December 1st QB slaughter.</p>
<p>motion12345-
There’s nothing wrong with U Chicago. If you go there, or want to go there, and it’s the right place for you, that’s great. But I found Northwestern infinitely more appealing and, more importantly, so did my kid. It’s very subjective, but I like the “mix” that NU offers much better than that of Chicago, just like (as I said above) I like the “mix” that WashU offers much more than JHU’s. There’s nothing wrong with JHU either. Different strokes…and al that.</p>
<p>WCASParent - I respectfully (I hope!) completely disagree with you about peer assessment being a good factor to use. Why would a professor/administrator at say, UC Irvine know much about the quality of a school like Drake, just to pick one out of a hat? Or Miami? Or any of hundreds of schools I could name? Sure, maybe they know about the people in their particular field of study at other schools, although that isn’t always true either. Do you think lawyers at a firm in Charlotte know about all the law firms in LA? OK, that isn’t quite fair, but it isn’t that far off either. They know about famous firms, just like academics know about famous reputations and schools that get a lot of publicity from sports. As was stated earlier, a school might get a good peer assessment because they are well known for research or consulting in their field, but that often does not translate in the least to the quality of the undergraduate experience. Not to mention that it has been shown that some people have purposely tanked peer schools in their assessments.</p>
<p>The USNWR rankings were an invention of a guy using intuitive criteria that he tweaked until the results came out in line with his expectations of how they should look. There was no fundamental basis or scientific criteria or follow-up study to see if that basis had any foundation in reality (mostly because there is no reality here, because “best” is subjective). Just his intuition. It has been tweaked since then, but by a group at USNWR that really have no better basis for their changes than what was there. And of course once you put the criteria out there for a good ranking and once the rankings gain currency (as they unfortunately have), schools will do what they can to game the system. And in this tirade of mine (lol) I have hardly touched on the whole idea that they are saying there is a “best” college. What does that even mean? To be fair, I know you agree with that based on your other statements. So I am really not trying to confront you at all, I just really disagree with the rankings in general, and peer assessment in particular.</p>
<p>In a much smaller universe where there could be much more complete knowledge about other entities, I would agree that peer assessment would be a good factor. But that is not the case here. Bottom line, at the end of the day, Wash U attracts excellent students (based on their high school records and standardized test scores) that seem to overwhelmingly agree that they find Wash U to be a tremendous experience both academically and socially once they are there. To me that is the best ranking you can have.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>…because WUSTL has low peer assessment.</p>
<p>For those of you that do not know him, completely ignore interestingguy as if he never posted. He is a total ■■■■■. Any response to him directly just eggs him on.</p>