My OOS DD has been accepted to Willamette & L&C. Her top choice in the PNW was UW-Seattle. She was rejected there. She also has been accepted to UW-Madison & we’re travelling to Wisconsin in April to check it out. We visited both L&C & Willamette & my daughter really enjoyed those campuses. She’s an East-Asian Studies major (we’re not Asian) and she selected PNW schools for their Pacific Rim opportunities. It’s a difficult choice. UW-Madison is most similar to UW-Seattle. So, there’s that. UW-Madison also has a very strong East Asian program - where she can also pick up Arabic (can do that @ L&C too.) Great FA packages from Willamette & L&C too. It’s a tough choice!
Would like to know more about internship opportunities at L&C & Willamette. They’re supposed to be excellent. We’ve already looked into the study abroad progams too (particularly Japan.)
It’s such a difficult decision for her! Wish someone could give some more thoughts on these schools.
My daughter is also quiet & studious. Most of her friends are Asian. She’s National Honors Society & VP of the HS Japanese Club too. Thanks.
@tad33 My DD is a freshman at Willamette. She also applied to Lewis & Clark and UW-Madison (in-state). She is a biology major so I can’t give you much insight about East Asian studies, other than to echo VickiSoCal that Willamette’s partnership with Tokyo International University means there is a year-round presence of many Japanese students, and there are some study abroad opportunities created by the partnership, in addition to all the normal study abroad programs.
DD’s thought process was that she would end up at a major research U like UW-Madison for grad/med school, and therefore wanted to give an LAC a try for undergrad.
Willamette has suited her socially in a couple of ways. 1. It is collaborative. Everyone, from the professors to the students are really nice. 2. It is not a party school. Like your DD, she is quiet and studious and would have found it socially isolating, I think, if all of her classmates wanted to party all the time. 3. The students pride themselves on being heavily involved on campus. DD is an outdoor programs leader, an EMT for Willamette’s EMS, and she tutors Native American high school students at a nearby boarding school. She is also in Chemistry Club and a knitting club. And this is a kid who did very little in terms of activities in high school.
Good luck to your DD with her decision. I don’t think she could go wrong at any of the 3 schools in terms of her intended major-they all sound quite strong. So it sounds like it’s more a question of fit-does she want a big U or a small LAC, is she ok with Wisconsin winters (I drove through the UW Madison campus yesterday and felt sorry for all the kids bundled up in their snow boots and parkas-later DD texted me a photo of ducklings on green grass near the mill stream at Willamette), is she okay with the PNW rains, etc.
Doing some digging for D who is looking into WU. She wants to do something in biotechnology and I read a review on Unigo that didn’t recommend WU for the sciences, any thoughts?
@BeefyBill I would say that Willamette is actually very strong in the sciences. (I’m currently a student but my major is not science related) . I have a couple friends who are in the sciences (Physics, Environmental Science, Biology). The classes sizes are small and I have heard the professors are great.
My daughter is white and wants to continue her Japanese studies…slightly disappointed to hear that the Asian students might pick on her for being white and liking the Asian culture and language. How overt was that?
We are from Iowa and looking at Willamette. Not many from midwest there…how was that for your daughter? Did she end up liking the school and thinking it was a good value?
Hi IowaMom66. My daughter is a senior at Willamette. She has found the other students to be genuine and well-grounded and the fact that there are not many students from the Midwest has not been an issue for her. Her housemates this year hail from Alaska, WA, OR, and Southern California. I’m not sure what she would say about it being a good value, since we have paid for most of it. But I can say that her Dad and I feel we got our money’s worth and then some. I think all 3 of us would agree that if we could do it all over again, we would choose Willamette again.
There are many non-Asians studying Japanese. It’s one of the things Willamette is best known for. I think the vibe is like “Oh, you came here to study Japanese?” So did Rachel and Wyatt and Marla. Have you met them?” My daughter had one of the students from Japan as a roommate last year. As an outdoor programs leader, she has also been on outings with several of them. I think the college does a good job of integrating the students from Japan into the general student body.
My son was admitted here, would like to be pre nursing. Does anyone have information on students studying health sciences here as opposed to the OHSU program at the Oregon State colleges (he has acceptances there too)?
How overt was that?