Anonymous wrote:Grad here. Many of the pros have been mentioned:
Amazing, friendly accessible professors
Small classes
Beautiful campus
Excellent preparation for pre-professional
Study abroad houses
Great size. Not so tiny everyone knows everyone. But small.
Neutral (kid dependent) :
Very Greek . I wasn’t, and had a great social life. But Greeks dominate.
More conservative than many schools— old school Republican, not Trumpian
Negatives:
It’s Southern and race issues (black/white) have made depressingly little progress.
WFU is very isolated from W-S physically, and W-S is not a college town. And is pretty disappointing for a DMV kid. I grew up near WFU and still go back to see relatives. My parents insist the arts scene is awesome. It’s not. It’s just a lot better than it was 20 years ago.
The campus being physically isolated means Greek parties (which are often open) dominate social life. It’s a school where having a car on campus should be very. Very helpful.
Their humanities programs hear kids for professional school. It is not known for and doesn’t do a great job producing humanities PhD candidates. Non-premed STEM (CS, physics, math) are the weaker departments.
If you are a smart, wealthy, white pre-med, pre-law, pre-business kid who wants to do Greek, are preppY and good with a drinking heavy culture, you will love it. If you are “different” in Race, class, goals, That difference might not be celebrated.
2003 grad here and I tend to agree with pretty much all of this. I had a fantastic time my four years and loved a lot about it (I was not Greek, but was friends with, partied with, and dated them). The study abroad opportunities were amazing and that was one of my favorite semesters. Essentially I wanted to go to a smaller school that still had great sports and great academics, and WF fit the bill (bball and football were still fun to watch back then).
All that said, I will not encourage my kids to look at it unless they somehow miraculously qualify for some amazing scholarships. It was ridiculously expensive when I went 20 years ago, and is even more insane now. While I think it is a fantastic school in many ways, I couldn't in good conscience justify the cost.