To our dear reader(s?)

I interrupt my regularly scheduled posting to answer a question from one of our readers. I know this has been covered in great and excellent detail by my fellow bloggers already, and I highly recommend reading their posts before delving into this one. (I think the prospective GW student who first asked the question has probably had her fill, but I'll share anyway.) Anyway, here's the point-by-point.

Most Liked:
--Faculty, in every department with which I have interacted, have been outstanding. These are people who have made a difference in the direction of my personal and professional aspirations.

--"Esprit d'G-Dubs" (Reputation, Alumni, and culture): this is something I've discovered since doing research for higher-level courses, but looking back it should have been obvious. One of my instructors for karate (the subject of a future post) is a veteran of the U.S. Navy. When I was first looking at GW, he told me that his longtime Commanding Officer had been a GW grad and that it was a great place for security studies.
I've found this out firsthand the longer I've stayed here--because I'm a Conflict and Security concentration in GW's International Affairs school, many materials I study are written by military officers. In many of these, there are "about the author" sections at the beginning of the monograph, and the number of GW grads is astounding considering the size of the school.
As someone who is considering the military as a career option, I can attest that having Colin Powell adorning the list of alums is heartening. But for many people in many fields that really make a difference around the U.S. and the world, the big G-Dubs has been home. Knowing that is inspiring in and of itself, but it also makes a real difference for us future graduates.

This goes along with what I see as the single most important element of any college decision: how you fit in with the people.

My high school was in an economically advantaged, fairly parochial suburb of New York City. I love the town, love the sense of community, and have nothing but fond wishes for all my high school classmates, but often felt dissociated from life there.  I didn't often get the sense that much of anyone cared about China's naval buildup, or genocide in Darfur, or federal tax policy, etc.
This is not true for GW, where for all the irritating everyday stuff I wrote about in my last post, by and large people care about the world and what happens in it. Furthermore, they make this mental involvement translate into academic and professional action using the unique opportunities we have here. I'll talk about the other schools I considered attending in the future, but among all of them GW really stood out in this regard.

Least Liked:
I do wish financial aid would be more meritocratic. I work hard to keep my GPA up, and wish more aid would be allotted to students who perform well.
At the same time, GW was--after financial aid--about as expensive for me as going to a state school. And if there's one thing I've discovered about financial aid, it's that everybody believes that they're entitled to an extra-big slice of the pie...so I won't complain too much. Despite housing costs, my education here will still fall within the debt window I had pictured when I first started my college search.

The University administration needs to improve advising services for students. This problem is especially acute in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (where anyone not majoring in International Affairs, Engineering, Business or Exercise Science calls home). I'll cover this in a later post, because I have a particular bone to pick with CCAS.

I wouldn't just decide to go here again if given the chance; I'd pull my application from Georgetown.
How's that for the proverbial gauntlet?

Questions? Comments? Seething, unbridled rage or Hosannas you want to vent? Let me know at ash1290@gwmail.gwu.edu.

--Adam