Quote: from blitzerdog at 4:15 pm on Sep. 29, 2009
I know a lot people say it's a commuter school for people who live in and around seattle metro area.
That's definitely true. I commute to the UW myself, which is about a 40 minute drive from where I live. When you pay for tuition, you also pay $99 for what's called a "U-pass", which basically grants you free rides on the different bus systems serving the entire Seattle area. My cousin tried testing how for north you could go with a U-pass for free and she made it all the way to Mount Vernon, which is about 60 miles north. It's very useful for getting around Seattle.
Of course, you can also get a refund on the U-pass if you don't wish to have it, so it's not exactly mandatory but it's assumed you pay for it as you have to actually go out somewhere to get a refund on it.
I was just up there for vacation and the campus is beautiful, but it's a huge campus (45000 people) and way too big for my liking. On the plus side, they have well known schools (business, science..etc).
From what I know about the UW in general, it's the largest university in the northwest. It's the oldest public university of the west coast (established in 1861 as the Territorial University of Washington). Its medical school is consistently ranked #1 in the US and is extremely competitive (much of the entire university has some focus on medicine - like my intro to anthropology class two years ago had a big focus on medical anthropology). But it's not limited to just that. There's the business school, which is one of the top rated ones in the country I believe, the law school is up there, there's the Evans school for public administration which is also up there, and just about any major you can think of.
The help you can find for writing, math, etc, as well as advising, has always been pretty good in my experience, but apparently the UW has cut back on it a lot as the state of Washington cut the UW's budget by like 13% - the largest budget cut in the school's history. As a result, classes this year are going to be larger, there's going to be fewer classes, fewer advisers, etc. Many other public universities are facing a similar predicament, though, at least from what I hear.
Any how, I hear the social life is kind of dead, being that 75% of students are from the local area.
Mmm, kind of yes and no. The UW isn't known as a party school, but there's plenty going on. Even the locals often live in dorms / Greek system and we have a large population of students from California who come here.
But because it is pretty competitive to get in now (average GPA of incoming freshmen is something like 3.7, I think), most students are here because they want to be here, which is a good thing when you're in classes, but you're not going to find as many looking to get drunk and have random sex all the time. I hear Washington State University is much better for that, but then again, it's starting to get competitive there as well.
I hope this helps. I"m going to apply as a transfer student I think, but i'm not really looking into it that much. It's a lot of money.
My tuition this quarter (for 15 credits, the standard) was $2663, but all in-state students get a big discount on tuition. I think the tuition for out of state students is something like two times that, and plus there's the room and boarding and all that. This would all add up to about $25,000 per year for an out of state student.
Post edited at 1:38 am on Sep. 30, 2009 by Bud2400
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