Wake Forest University

Date: Oct 17 2004
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
While I was a law student at Wake Forest, I was Hall Director of one of the undergraduate dormitories for 2 years. I feel I got a really good outsider's look into undergraduate life at Wake Forest, and I can say that I wish I had attended Wake when I was an undergraduate.

In some of the other surveys, people have written that the average Wake student is wealthy, Republican, and White. These things are true, but there are other universities where the average student is liberal and urbane; being Republican and white doesn't mean that it is a bad place any more than being liberal and urbane (actually, as a Republican myself, I might dispute how good a liberal place is, j/k). Anyhow, it just depends on for what you are looking.

The average Wake student might be the above-mentioned things, but he is also friendly, engaged, smart, and upbeat. When I was a new hall director, I was worried that I would have all manner of problems controling my building -after all, there was one of me to suprvise 287 students. Instead, I found the students to be likeable people with whom I could easily to work. They generally seemed HAPPY at Wake. This was so refreshing, because where I did my undergrad (Johns Hopkins) NOBODY was happy with his experience.

The students DO work hard at Wake Forest, but it was not nearly as excessive or obsessive as what I saw at Johns Hopkins. I don't think it got too much in the way of the students enjoying themselves.

The social scene is heavily Greek dominated… and I can understand why the people who were not in fraternities or sororities would feel excluded from alot of the campus social scene. If you don't like a Greek atmosphere, Wake might not be for you; however, I did not tend to see the boarishness often associated with fraternties.

I don't think that Wake Forest lacks diversity in the dictionary sense of the word; there are people from every region of the country and from many places in the world. However, it is not "diverse" in the politically correct sense of the word; you are not going to find a daily gripe session for lesbian eskimos to talk about how they fell oppressed by the patriarchy and corporate America. In the PC sense of the word, however, what you actually have is the same left-wing orthodoxy which pervades so much of higher education. This is refreshingly absent amoung the Wake student body. Rather, at Wake, you will find a mix of people who mirror an upscale version of America as a whole; people from different backgrounds with different views who generally get along with one another.

Wake is very cloistered - Winston-Salem is a neat little town, but really isn't a college town. There is no college village surrounding campus. When I lived on campus, I left once a week to go to synagogue and the grocery store. Sometimes, older Wake students will go down to Burke Street to attend one of Winston-Salem's 3 bars. Students also go off-campus for Church (Wake Forest Baptist Church is so watered down and PC that very few students, or anybody else for that matter, attend.) Besides that, there is very little town-gown interaction.

Wake Forest is not a granola-eating tree-huggers paradise, by any strecth of the imagination. If you are looking to get some Zen-like revelation out of college, this is not the place for you. However, if you want a rigorous education taught by motivated professors, classmates who are friendly and upbeat, and beautiful surroundings think strongly about Wake.