WashU: “it’s a great school.”

All jokes aside, Washington University in St. Louis really is a great school. Would I have gone there if I were born in the US or had done ever-so-slightly better on my SATs or what not, probably not. It was a neutral decision to go to WashU driven mostly by my interest in becoming a physician, which had developed during my teenage years. It was really just whatever. But WashU was a great experience. It was a school in a city that had a warmth that I truly needed at that point in my life. It possessed the academic rigor and focus that I craved.

My only complaint is that I think WashU is too much of a family-oriented school. I feel like most people I interacted with there were just focused on getting the marriage correct. Don’t get me wrong, marriage is a very important part of life. Is it the most important thing there is? Debatable. It tends to have a high fail rate, and I’m not just talking about divorce. I wouldn’t put too many eggs in that basket, so to speak.

Overall, I feel that WashU students were either the ones, like me, who couldn’t for whatever reason get into their top choice institution or who got into their top choice institution but chose a more humble, less name brand school. Therefore, WashU lacked a sort of commitment to greatness that I think I wanted, which I probably could’ve found at, say, a much higher ranked institution.