GW, By George!

“The George Washington University was established by an act of Congress in 1821. It was the last time Congress did anything at all.” 

It was one of the funniest opening lines of any college information session ever, and also among the most refreshing. We’ve often wondered why more colleges don’t start by sharing their origin stories, because they so often say something about what makes them different. Such is most definitely the case with GW.

Our first president believed the United States needed a university located in the nation’s capital. He saw value in bringing young people together from across the country because he thought it would help create a shared national identity. He also envisioned a training ground for virtuous individuals capable of governing the new republic, as an academy of civic leadership. 

This never quite happened. Washington earmarked some stock in his will to help realize his vision, but the paper turned out to be worthless. While Congress eventually established the school anyway, it was privately funded by Baptist ministers and originally called Columbian College. It was renamed in George Washington’s honor in 1914 when it became a university. 

If he could walk the 20 city blocks of the school’s main campus today, Gen’l Washington would no doubt feel his dream was realized beyond his wildest imagination. Not only is this institution uniquely situated in the political epicenter of the United States, but it is also a global research university that is home to 11,000 undergraduates from all 50 states and 140 countries.

He might also be tickled that the additional 25-acre green GW campus that sits about three miles away is known as Mount Vernon, or just “the Vern.” About 90 percent of freshmen live there and take shuttle vans that run about every 10 minutes. 

So, is GW a city or a green campus?  It is both – and neither. True, the main campus is mostly concrete, but the school does have an amazing quad, also known as the National Mall, where you can find a small chain of well-regarded museums known collectively as the Smithsonian, just a few blocks away. GW is the only university that holds its graduation ceremony on the Mall, near the foot of the Washington Monument.

Unlike other “city” schools, this one feels more like an exclusive neighborhood. So blended is GW into its neighborhood that the only way to know you’re off-campus is that the garbage cans no longer have the school’s logo on them. If you’re wondering about campus security, it might help to know that on patrol are not only DC and campus police, but also the Secret Service. 

The “Foggy Bottom” residential townhouses blend into the dormitories, classrooms, libraries, student union, and the largest event space in DC after the Kennedy Center (which is only about a ten-minute walk away). The State Department is literally on campus, as is the Interior Department, the IMF, and the World Bank. The White House is just four blocks away. The Capitol building is maybe a 15-minute Metro ride. 

Senators, Representatives, Cabinet officers, Supreme Court Justices, and news anchors are on campus so often that it barely causes a ripple when they arrive. It all adds up to what the admissions office likes to call the “Only at GW” experience. 

You probably know where we’re going with this. Given its proximity to so many incredible resources, the internship opportunities (which can lead directly to jobs) are off the charts here. About three-quarters of GW students complete at least one internship; our tour guide was on track to finish five. 

Some might dismiss GW because they’re not interested in politics, history, or government. A brief stop at the newly built, state-of-the-art Science and Engineering Hall is grounds for a recalculation. 

We stood mesmerized in the building’s atrium, looking through a plate-glass window, watching students clustered around small tables as their professor flashed problems on a jumbo screen. The ultra-modern, glass-fronted GW School of Business emitted a different but similarly cutting-edge vibe.

Then our tour guide told us about ACE, which is GW’s international business degree. ACE stands for America, China, Europe, and it’s a four-year bachelor’s degree in business designed to give students a truly global educational experience. Students earn three separate bachelor’s degrees, one from each partner institution: Luiss University in Rome, Renmin University of China in Beijing, and, of course, GW. Students finish with a degree from all three schools. This definitely wasn’t Gen’l Washington’s idea, but he’d certainly love it. 

At the end of our tour, a student asked what made GW different from other universities. We thought the answer was clear by then, but our tour guide’s answer is worth repeating. 

She said: “Some schools, cough Georgetown cough, focus on knowledge. Other schools, cough American cough, emphasize the experience. What makes GW different is that it centers on both knowledge and the experience.”

Is that true “only” at GW? We cannot tell a lie. Probably not. But somewhere, George Washington is smiling.

There's No Place Like Tufts

Through the gates and up the hill to Ballou Hall at Tufts University

The saying, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” came to mind as we toured the Tufts University campus. We had an above-average reason for feeling that way, as we had both graduated as Jumbos more years ago than we will confirm or deny. 

We traveled to our alma mater from downtown Boston, which meant that the first thing we saw was the ginormous athletic complex: The Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center. Despite its newly controversial name, this is quite the upgrade from the venerable and historic Cousens Gymnasium, which thankfully still stands. Across the street is a healthy collection of football, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, track, and other fields. 

Right there at the corner stands the ultra-modern, mostly glass, Joyce Cummings Center. We later learned it is an interdisciplinary center that opened in 2021, well past our Tuftonian sell-by date. It mainly houses classrooms and meeting areas for the Computer Science, Economics, and Mathematics Departments. 

It is also home to certain programs from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy as well as the Derby Entrepreneurial Center. The architecture, layout, and amenities are meant to reflect a focus on collaboration, innovation, community, and sustainability. It is one of only three Tufts buildings named for a woman (Bush and Stratton dorms are the others). Joyce Cummings is the wife of real estate developer and philanthropist Bill Cummings. 

As we hung a right to get to the brand spanking new parking garage below the equally glistening Tufts admissions welcoming center (right next to a new dorm construction site), we passed the recently inaugurated MTBA stop, part of the Green line that connects the campus to downtown Boston, including Fenway Park and other neighborhoods. That would have been really nice back in the day.

We took the elevator up seven levels of parking to the welcome center at Dowling Hall, which is at ground level. The welcoming desk was dark and empty: understandable as there were no tours scheduled that day. A sign suggested we proceed to the admissions office. After we traversed a footbridge and followed a short path, everything suddenly looked familiar. Despite the many evident changes as we first approached Tufts, the main campus was eerily almost exactly as we remembered it. 

Of course, the Admissions Office is now where the bookstore used to be, although that change happened decades ago. The interior re-design was thoroughly New England collegiate and very comfortable. We couldn’t help but notice the many NCAA trophies lining a bookcase. Tufts is a D3 school, and a very successful one, particularly in soccer and lacrosse. 

We were soon joined by not one but two very warm and friendly admissions representatives: Associate Director Jack Griffith, who joined Tufts from Rice University recently, and counselor Kaitlyn Calnan. They were very generous with their time and patiently answered our many and often geeky questions that only college counselors would care about.

Both Jack and Kaitlyn became quite animated while talking about the relatively new Entrepreneurial minor at Tufts, which historically has not offered business classes of any kind. We don’t know, but if we had to guess, we’d hazard that a business major may not be far behind. 

That would be significant for Tufts, which in recent years has placed a heavy emphasis on STEM. This was evident not only in the prominence of the Joyce Cummings Center, but also in the bustling hive that is the Tsungming Tu Complex, which combines what used to be the Anderson and Robinson Halls, along with a major modern addition out back. 

That high energy contrasted sharply with the ghost town that is Braker Hall, where History, Philosophy, and other humanities hold forth (originally, Braker was built for a Business school that never transpired). Granted, we were there during the finals reading period and classes were out of session, but Braker looked almost exactly as staid and dusty as it did back in the late 1970s.

Interestingly, Jack mentioned that he’d like to see more applications from humanities students, which may suggest a pendulum swing back to the liberal arts for which Tufts was historically revered. 

Kaitlyn also noted a somewhat new initiative called the Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education. It is designed to bring a wider array of political, cultural, and ideological perspectives into campus discourse through classes, as well as events, reading groups, curriculum development, research projects, and public conversations.

It is an outgrowth of a popular course called “American Conservatism” taught by Eitan Hersh, a center-right political science professor who has made waves with his mission to build a better understanding of conservative thought on a largely progressive campus. 

The balance of our time at Tufts was a magical nostalgia tour through the vastly expanded albeit still familiar library, one of the wildly updated dining halls (the food was terrible when we were students, but it appears totally edible now), and the dorms where we lived and first met, which look pretty much the same (just like we do!). 

We grabbed a bite to eat at Mayer Campus Center, which didn’t exist back then but looks quite well lived-in now. We wondered how many of these impossibly young students had any idea that “Mayer” was Jean Mayer, who was the president of Tufts during our time there and is widely credited with putting the university on the elite path it has travelled ever since.

Often, when we ask students why they liked a particular school, they say something like, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just the vibe.” That’s exactly how we both felt when we first toured campus all those years ago; it just felt like home. It’s great to know that it still does.

It’s Great to BU

A view from within Boston University’s Duan Family Center for Computing and Data Science

There’s cold, and then there’s wicked cold. That’s the only kind of cold on an early December morning while standing outside a locked door at Boston University’s modern, glassy, Leventhal Center, 45 minutes early for a 9:30 information session. They wouldn’t let us in. Why wouldn’t they let us in? We could see them inside, nice and warm. 

Oh, well. Maybe we could find a Starbucks or something. We pivoted and took a right, finding ourselves facing this amazing, gravity-defying architectural wonder that looked like the world's tallest game of Jenga. How else to describe it? Chunky clusters of the edifice were stacked and staggered – two, three, and four floors at a time – as it reached for the sky. 

Its doors were open, and it turned out to be the Duan Family Center for Computing and Data Science. Even if STEM is not your thing, this building would be reason enough to apply to BU. We never advanced beyond the soaring atrium of the ground level, but were instantly mesmerized by the kaleidoscopic staircase rising above, and impressed with the energy of its denizens, grabbing coffee, waiting for elevators, and catching up with one another, palpably eager for the day ahead. 

The day before, we had walked the main part of the Harvard campus. It’s always awe-inspiring and also a bit intimidating to be there; you can almost feel your IQ melting in the intellectual ooze within earshot. We didn’t enter any buildings, but couldn’t help but notice how old and fusty it looked. Sure, it may be state-of-the-art inside, but the Yard projected a storied past more than a tantalizing future. 

It was now 9:00, so we headed back to the Leventhal Center at BU, where the doors swung open wide, and the warmth was evident in more than just the room temperature. A sophomore named Nick greeted us with a giant smile as he checked us in on his iPad. 

He said he was from Georgia, and when we asked him what he liked about BU, he didn’t miss a beat. He said it was BU Hub, the university’s clever way of combining ostensibly disconnected subject areas, like philosophy and biology, for example. Even more important, it enables you to amortize your general education requirements across all four years. This mattered to Nick because it meant he could dive right into his public relations major as opposed to dispensing with all of his mandatory subjects first.  

We later learned that BU Hub is composed of hundreds of courses organized along various themes: Scientific & Social Inquiry, Communication, Diversity, Civic Engagement, and Global Citizenship. The overall approach is creative, such that if you are not a math type, you can fulfill your requirement by taking a philosophy course called “Puzzles and Paradoxes,” which focuses on critical thinking, logic, and life's big questions through analyzing absurd conclusions from basic beliefs (e.g., everyone is bald).

Nick also mentioned that he appreciated BU’s flexibility, which enabled him to switch his major easily from journalism to public relations, where the job market is stronger. This was echoed during our information session, during which Sofia, a junior, described her circuitous journey to become an English, Spanish, and Pre-Law major. BU prides itself on enabling students to switch majors as often as they like and still graduate within four years. 

The info session, by the way, was among the very best we’ve seen (and we’ve attended scores of them). It wasn’t the usual PowerPoint data dump that’s numbingly reminiscent of every other college, but rather an honest-to-goodness dialogue between Maddy, an admissions counselor, and Sofia, a student. The two of them sat before a jumbo screen displaying hero shots of the campus from every imaginable angle as they spoke extemporaneously to each other and to us.

It was outstanding – possibly the GOAT - and very different from the last time we had attended a BU information session, several years ago. Back then, we were jammed into a basement space, with an admissions counselor droning on behind a podium, with no visuals of any kind. At the time, the BU admissions rate was about 36%, compared to about 11% today. We’re not suggesting correlation or causation, but times certainly have changed at BU as they have at many other schools (Harvard excepted, perhaps :).

Another thing that really stood out: BU offers study abroad programs that guarantee an internship as part of the experience. Also, BU covers 100% of tuition for households earning less than $200K, and about 20% of each class are first-generation students. Fifty-nine percent of accepted students applied for early decision. If you submit your application by December 1st, you are automatically considered for financial aid. 

As we left the Leventhal, it was still brutally cold outside, but hey, that’s Boston in the wintertime, and it’s worth wearing a few extra layers for the vibe alone. There are college towns, and there are college towns … and then there is Boston, arguably the best of them all. Greater Boston is home to upwards of 75 colleges and perhaps as many as a quarter million undergraduates. BU or otherwise, it’s hard to imagine a more exhilarating college community than that.

It's a thing of BU-tee.