George Washington University Top Questions

Decent professors, great choices for classes, moderatley challenging

Depending on your major, some teachers know your name and others dont, but even in a large lecture class, if you want the teacher to know your name, you can make it a point to get to know the professor.

I love all my classes at GW. My professors are the most well connected professors at this school. Mike Freedman is the hands down best teacher at GW. I love the SMPA, If i see any of my teachers outside of class or around campus I could have a 10 minute conversation with them.

Not the most challenging but a great place for international relations

Most professors do know your name. Interestingly enough for a business major, my favorite class was International Relations in Latin America, a Senior level class I took when I was a freshman. The professor was this 70-something guy who was a major player in the State Department's Latin America department, and had just retired. He had also ran the Organization of American States. GW students have absurd amounts of intellectual conversations, which is good, and very humorous when alcohol is involved. Which it often is. Students are often so competitive that they won't give you notes if you missed a class. Because they don't want you to fuck up the curve. I feel education is geared towards learning for it's own sake. I took a class called Management Operations Systems (a Business School requirement) where we had to use statistics to find inefficiencies in a production line, manually. Nobody does it manually anymore, they punch in numbers into an SPSS program or something, so this class was completely pointless.

Overrated, the classes are too large, too many TA'S

The great thing about going to a good school like GW is that most people really do their work. Finals time everyone studies. And even when it isn't during exams, most people are really dedicated to their work, so it helps to stay motivated.

the classes are pretty good. decently small. freshman year pretty much intro classes but the rest are like 20-60 kids. there are a lot of GCR's which is the gen ed requirements.

I've had amazing professors. My recommendation is that you build relationships with the ones you really like, particularly in the department of your major. They are great resources. I'm a Political Communication major in the School of Media and Public Affairs and I love the whole department. We have access to innovative technology with hands-on learning experience. I'm currently taking Introduction to Digital Media Production and filmed and edited my own mini-documentary. GW education is very future-and-goal-oriented, so my News Writing and Reporting class was teaching us to write for a newspaper, with the ultimate goal that we eventually would join a news organization after graduation. While this of course was not the plan of everyone in the class, it gives you knowledge from the inside. We are all news consumers, and it's interesting to read an article after you know the traditional news structures and formats and evaluate that reporter's writing. Some of the requirements (especially for the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences) are demanding. You must take a broad range of courses but some of my favorite courses have been general curriculum requirements, like Astronomy.

Academics are fine at GW, I've never had a problem with my classes, but I have had friends who have brand new teachers, adjuncts, or grad students, learn nothing, get a less than desireable grade and they just paid thousands of dollars for what, some credits? Large lecture classes at GW should be taught by the most entertaing professors, not the least, that kills people's desire to want to get interested in the fields of study that GW offers. I dislike GW because when people drink, they discuss politics and I usually just want to chill. I am in the most popular major at GW, political science and the advising is a little "one size fits all" but thats to be expected . The academic requirement's are pretty well spelled out, but the grading in some classes can be subjective.