Gonzaga University Top Questions

Some might be turned off to go to school in Spokane, but the whole city loves Gonzaga! It's not too small where you feel like there is nothing to do, but not too big where you feel like you might be lost like New York or LA.

The Gonzaga campus is beautiful and extremely well-kept; even during the harsh Spokane winters. It's a good sized medium school, though it tends to have a rather homogeneous student population. If you like to work out, Gonzaga may be your ideal match; with its two story gym that boasts over 50 cardio machines, the gym is nothing short of spectacular. The Dorms are decent. The city of Spokane, in truth, leaves a lot to be desired. Downtown Spokane is fairly nice, but the rest of Spokane is a city without soul and extremely industrial. All the bars are sports bars and their filled with complete dead-heads (and I don't mean the old hippies who used to follow around the Grateful Dead which would be a lot cooler). One thing that's for certain though, those dead-head Spokies sure love Gonzaga University. Everyone from the local gas station guy to Spokane Policeman proudly proclaim their Bulldog pride. All in all Gonzaga's a good school, unless of course you're looking for an artsy type liberal college...Gonzaga is, in essence, the anti-UC Berkeley.

Gonzaga is a school that prides itself on its commitment to community service, and alot of the students are doing some really good volunteer work. In some cases, however, volunteering and public service become a front for fraternity-like organizations and behavior, as in the case of the Knights and Setons. I would tell a prospective student interested in serving the community that you will find ample opportunity to do just that; however, I would caution you that the altruistic slogans and idealistic rhetoric displayed prominently all over every publication that GU produces are little more than empty words. Your experience at Gonzaga will be what you make it.

The best thing about Gonzaga is the community. It's just the right size where you can have a great group of close friends and still know a lot of other people. It's hard to just blend in on this campus too, professors really try to get to know their students. While I'm on campus I usually spend a lot of time in the library or in the basement of Crosby. Of course, if you live on campus you definitely will spend a lot of time in the dorms, most of which are pretty old, but really? Everyone's outside all of the time and you're with such great people it doesn't really matter if they are that bad. Part of the draw for me to Gonzaga was the pride students have in their school, this can be seen through the two weeks of camping out a lot of students did before one of the big basketball games this past year.

Gonzaga is a place where you will always see someone you know walking through campus. Even people you don't know will say "hello" and throw a smile your way. This is something that is so special about Gonzaga. Where are a commmunity, this is my favorite thing about Gonzaga.

The people and community are great. I just meet so many good people while at school and developed friendships that will last throughout my life. I experienced great personal growth while at Gonzaga. And as corny as it sounds they really do educate the whole person. The school was a great size. You knew everyone but there was still chances to meet more people. As a biology major it sometimes would have been nice to be at a larger campus where more research was being conducted.

The school is too small, the teachers grade like you are in high school. The weather is terrible 6 out of the nine months. GU is located in the worst part of Spokane (which already is bad enough). The weekends there is nothing to do unless there is a basketball game which are fun.

I loved my years at Gonzaga. The school is growing much too rapidly, but the community is really close-knit and amazing. People love the basketball team; I never really cared about it, but it gives you a topic of conversation with most strangers you meet when you tell them you went there. Spokane is awesome -- nobody believes this until their junior or senior year. Make sure you get off campus and you'll love it. The administration is undergoing change right now, so hopefully it will get a bit less conservative. The professors are very liberal. It really was a wonderful school...I loved it.

Gonzaga is a highly unique school for many reasons, but one of the most prominent is it's nestled position as a "Small-Big" school. With only about 5,000 students (including graduate), Gonzaga is by most standard a small university, boasting small class sizes, and great accessibility to research, facilities, extracurriculars and one-on-one attention. On the other hand, Gonzaga has received national recognition and praise by way of its unexpectedly successful basketball team. Now, of course there are those that argue that an excellence in one sport doesn't necessarily define a good school, which may very well be true; however, as an already outstanding institution I believe that Gonzaga has only worked to capitalize on its athletic success to set itself on a national stage. In this way the campus culture and student interest is most certainly athletically oriented. During all four years of my time as a student, several of my friends and classmates were varsity athletes and if not, they were somehow involved in a intermural sport or were planning a camping trip that weekend; often it would be all three. At some universities, academics and philosophical conversation, music, or religion dominates students' time out of the classroom, however, at Gonzaga you'll rarely see an empty gym or a frisbeeless field on a nice day. This is not to say that students are not highly involved in the community or pursuing their own unique interests. Gonzaga students just simply love sports. And for this reason I don't think it will take long to notice that Gonzaga has a lot of pride. A lot.

I LOVE GONZAGA!