Georgetown University Panel

Webinar Transcription

2020-08-08 Georgetown University Panel

[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. Welcome to Bullseye admissions college panel for Georgetown university. This is our fifth webinar out of our August webinars series. My name is Lilly Hsu. I’m the program manager at Bullseye, and I’m gonna be your moderator for tonight. So just to get everyone oriented with the webinars structure and the different functions that we have we’re going to start off with a 30 minute presentation at Georgetown and then had the last 30 minutes for a live Q and a with our lovely panelists.

So on the sidebar, if you want to download the slides, you can do that in the handouts tab. And if you are in the questions in the Q and a tab throughout the piece, also have a few pools offers and also handouts. So just to get started, I’m super excited to introduce you guys to our Georgetown panelists.

We have Brindley who graduated from Georgetown in 2019. She double majored in history and government, and we also have Tamara who also graduated in 2019. She majored in international history. And fun fact tomorrow is actually joining us from Europe today, which is why we moved the time to a little bit earlier.

So next, I’ll let you Brinley [00:01:00] tell us more about Georgetown. Yeah. Great. Welcome everybody. So Georgetown university, as you may know, is a small private university in Northwest Washington, DC. There are roughly 7,000 undergraduates that are split up across four undergraduate colleges. These are Georgetown college, the Walsh school of foreign service, the McDonough school of business and the school of nursing and health sciences.

It is quite a small student to faculty ratio. In my experience, a lot of the bigger introductory classes you’re intro to government intro to economics type classes. Those ran a little big with maybe 200 students or so, but each of those also has a like discussion or recitation section where you get to.

Work with about 25 of your peers and a TA who’s usually a graduate student often a PhD,[00:02:00]

the students. So most of my classes that weren’t the bigger lecture style classes were quite small, I would guess probably about 20 to 25 people per class. But I also had classes that were even smaller than that. One of them just had probably four or five people so they can really range.

It really depends on your field of study, but you do get a lot of time directly with faculty. Georgetown also has quite a small campus. It is. 104 acres. You can walk across the whole thing in 10 or maybe 15 minutes. And that was very different for me. I grew up in Mesa, Arizona which is a very suburban area, just a little bit outside of Phoenix.

And it was, people use the car to get everywhere. And Georgetown is very much a walking campus, a walking [00:03:00] city walking is usually faster even than taking the bus. So that was something to get used to, but it is really nice that your classes are all fairly close together. And I really liked Georgetown’s campus feel it’s a small campus, but it’s in a very large city.

So you do feel like you’re at this private, like university, like it’s a little bit more isolated and quiet, but you can walk down to the monuments in half an hour. You can take a 10 minute bus ride and you’re on Capitol hill. So all of the resources of Washington DC are right at your fingertips.

And for me, it was really like the best of both worlds. Really I’m getting a kind of spinning wheel. Do you mind changing this? Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So Georgetown has quite a few notable alumni. Antonin Scalia is one famous one. As many of you may know he is a, or he was a Supreme court justice. He passed away in 2016.

Bill Clinton is probably our most famous alum. [00:04:00] We also have quite a few pretty famous basketball players Dicamba Mutombo, and Patrick Ewing are two of the most famous Greta Von sister-in was a news anchor. And fortunately also has a unexpected number of comedians. John Malaney, Mike Birbiglia, Jim Gaffigan Nick Kroll, all of those are former Hoyas.

So apparently the English department is very funny. Georgetown also has a very robust international community. Students come from all over the world to study there about 17% of the student body is international. And in addition to that, quite a few students study abroad during their junior year either one semester or the full year.

And that makes it a really vibrant and interesting place with people who have a lot of different experiences. Another kind of fun fact is every couple of years, the seniors or other students will still be clock hands from the healing power. And if you’re [00:05:00] familiar with campus at all Healy tower, Very tall.

I have no idea how people get up there, but they steal the hands and traditionally mailed them to the Vatican DB, blessed by the Pope and then returned. But just in case they aren’t returned, the university archives also keeps some molds so that new hands can be made at very short notice. And finally Georgetown incorporated, or commonly known as the Corp is the largest entirely student run nonprofit in the world.

They run a few coffee shops on campus, including one in the library. They run a salad bar, a snack shop, a grocery store, and they also run a summer student storage program. So instead of buying a storage unit or something, you can just. Pay them to take your boxes and they will deliver them to you when you allowed to move in for the next year.

Let’s see if that slide works. It does. Okay. So moving on a little bit to Georgetown’s academics Georgetown is a predominantly [00:06:00] liberal arts college. They have these four undergraduate schools, as I mentioned, and all four schools share some of the same core requirements for all undergraduate students to take.

Oh, this is one slide too far. Let me see if I can go back. Apologies for that. Anyway, all students take many of the same classes, so that’s going to be writing classes the philosophy classes, theology, et cetera. And each of the four schools also adds its own spin on it. Based on what.

Students from that program need to know based on what that school is trying to teach. So this list is very representative of the Georgetown college requirements. I was in the college as a student, as we mentioned, I was a history and government major. And so a lot of these courses were pretty easy for me to.

Take just through my regular course of study because they also counted towards my major requirements. And I know when I was [00:07:00] applying I was a little bit apprehensive about the list of course, or requirements because it looks really long to me. And there were just so many requirements, so many classes that I, I had to take that weren’t in what I wanted to study, but as I started taking them, I realized that really wasn’t too much of a problem.

Because as I said if you’re majoring in government, you need to take the introductory government courses anyway. You don’t have to take social science classes that are outside your major to count as the core requirement. Additionally, some of these classes are offered in. Like you don’t necessarily have to take a class in that department to count for the core requirement.

So for example if you are not too jazzed about taking calculus or something you could take the government statistics class or the economics statistics class that are in the government and economics departments, but that count towards the math requirement. Similarly, a lot of these requirements are quite flexible.

For theology, for [00:08:00] example, most students take a class called problem with God. But you can choose between that and a class called introduction to biblical literature for your first of the two classes. And then the second can be whatever you want to can be a deeper dive into Christianity and Catholicism.

It can be Buddhism. It can be really like wherever your interests lie, it could be a comparative study. There’s tons of options. These classes are housed in departments that have a lot of different classes that are available because they’re very popular with students for not only the core requirements, but also majors, minors, et cetera.

The last requirement that I want to mention just briefly is the engaging diversity requirement. And this is a fairly new one. It didn’t apply to our graduating class, but it does apply to, I think everybody at the school now it just requires that you either or that you take two classes, one that has a tag of diversity [00:09:00] domestic, and one that has a tag of diversity global.

So again, it’s pretty easy to double up here. For example, if you’re taking your humanities, arts, literatures and cultures classes maybe for that class, you take something like Asian-American literature that could also count as your diversity domestic class. It’s not a separate department or, if you’re taking Middle-East history or something that could definitely count as your diversity global class.

So they’re really built into the other core requirements. Something to be mindful of as you’re choosing your classes, just make sure that you don’t end up as a senior and not have that, which I think would be pretty hard to do. And one thing that is really nice about the like core requirements in this core curriculum, whatever school you’re in is if you are undecided when you’re applying or maybe you, no, you want to major in one thing, if, you want to be an English major, but you’re looking for maybe a second major or a minor or something these classes can really [00:10:00] expose you to a lot of different disciplines, a lot of different curriculum because of course, college is different than high school.

You have more options and so you can really learn what you might like that you just hadn’t been exposed to before. I know I did an English minor after taking my health class. And I know a lot of other people who added. A philosophy minor or an a second major or a minor in like sociology or something.

So it really is there to expand what you’re aware of and just expose you to new things. Okay. So moving on to this next slide here. So our next kind of focus area for Georgetown is talking about the undergraduate program and also the graduate programs. Georgetown has four, four undergraduate schools, but they have a lot of graduate schools as well.

And some of these are more professionally oriented. That would be mostly the law school and the med school, others. Really closely tied to the [00:11:00] undergraduate programs. For example, the school of foreign service grad school has I think the same graduation ceremony as the undergrad. So they’re, very closely intertwined there.

I felt like graduate programs were quite separate from undergrads while I was there for the most part. The medical school and the law school. Pretty distinct from the main campus where your undergrad classes are going to be. The med school is behind this hospital. That’s like way off in one corner of campus.

So you’d have to really make an effort to get over there. And probably you wouldn’t go unless you’re in the nursing and health sciences school or something. And then the law school is downtown DC, so it’s right near Capitol hill. It is available to you. You can go study at the library if you want to.

I know one summer when I was studying for the GRE and working downtown, I would go there on my lunch breaks and study. No questions asked, like I was still at Georgetown student, but you’re just, you’re not there that much. And so it’s not something that [00:12:00] most students do that often. One thing that I would keep in mind if you are applying to Georgetown or if you’re a current student and you’re thinking about grad school is a lot of these programs do have quite good integrations with the undergraduate program.

Maybe like the students are a little bit separate, but there are quite a few what they call like accelerated dual degree programs. So that would be like during your senior year, you could start taking some graduate level coursework that might count for two or three of your classes. And then you would just need one more year to finish your master’s degree.

And then in five years you have a bachelor’s and a master’s. There are also what are called early assurance programs with the law school and the med school. And you apply to those in your sophomore or junior year, you apply to the med program as a sophomore the law program as a junior, and they require you to cook, completed certain requirements up to that point.

I know for the. Med early assurance program. You need to have [00:13:00] completed four out of the five main like pre-med classes and for the law school, you need to have completed five semesters. But the main advantage of those is you can apply early and know even before the main application season for those kinds of things that you have a spot and you don’t have to take the LSAT or the end cap.

And that is really huge for the law school. They changed things a little bit a few years ago. So you do have to submit a standardized test score. So that’s, your act or your sat that you’re using for applications to your undergrad that can count as part of your law school application.

If you are accepted and you decide to go, then you do need to sit for the LSAT. And before they’ll let you start. This was a regulation handed down by the El SAC. And it doesn’t really affect you as a student that much because your offer of admission is not going to be rescinded based on your sat score.

So it doesn’t matter so much, [00:14:00] but You just have to take it. So that’s something to think about and plan for, ahead of time. If you’re planning on doing either of those early assurance programs or the kind of accelerated dual degree programs, you usually are going to need to know about that and start planning a semester or two in advance.

The dual degree programs, those are in all sorts of departments history, government, computer science, linguistics, math those, you usually need to have your GRE taken by the end of your first semester in your junior year. Which is usually much earlier than students are thinking about the GRE.

If you’re not familiar with what the GRE is, it’s the standardized test for graduate school admissions. So you’ll want to start thinking about that at least the summer before. Especially if you’re a little bit rusty on like math or vocabulary or things like that. So there are things that you want to be thinking about in advance.

Maybe do a little bit of research in the department you plan to major in. But they can be really good opportunities to get you that graduate [00:15:00] degree in a shorter amount of time. And with quite a bit less stress because you don’t have to wait and wonder about half a dozen schools or more than a dozen schools, you can just know ahead of time.

So that’s a really good opportunity that Georgetown offers. And it’s something to work with your department on, if that’s something that interests you.

Okay. I have a spinning wheel again. I don’t know if this slide changed, but yeah, I can flip the guide. So before we have tomorrow, I’ll tell you a little bit about stint light, but you guys just got a quick preview of we have a trivia question for you guys. So how many advocacy and social justice clubs are there at Georgia?

And then while you guys are answering the poll I know we’ve been having a few connection issues. Sorry about that. Tamara, can you give us a quick shout out if you’re able to? So here’s just check that your audio is working. Okay. Yes. So I’m here. Can you guys hear me? Yeah, we can hear you just fine.

Fantastic. Sorry about the lack of video, but the wifi is not cooperating today. Yeah,[00:16:00]

right. So we’re going to keep the poll open for a few more seconds. So far answer C 1 0 1 clubs seems to be in the lead.

I’m going to close the poll. The answer was actually D 127 clubs. So we have a lot of advocacy and social justice clubs at Georgetown. So tomorrow I’ll let you tell us more about student life. I’ll be honest with you even. I didn’t know that number. Let me tell you all about thought some of the popular major options that Georgetown offers.

So as Brindley mentioned, Georgetown is actually consists of four schools. So you have the Georgetown college, the school of foreign service, the business school and the nursing and health sciences school. And so depending on the school, you’re going to have different majors that are the most popular. So in the school of foreign service where I went, the bicycle most popular major was international politics.

Which had, I want to say the majority of the school foreign service in it. It actually has three tracks within it, like concentrations that you [00:17:00] pick and that’s international law, international security or foreign policy. And another major that was really popular. When I was graduating was the science technology and international affairs option that was quite recently introduced, I think, 2018 or 2017 in the college.

Some of the more, most popular options were government history and foreign languages. So we, Georgetown actually offers more than 24 in languages. You can only major in about 10 of those, but you can take classes as electives in 20 different options. So you have less common languages like Ukrainian, Polish, Farsi, Catalan really whatever your heart desires of one of the most robust language programs I believe.

And then in the business school I can’t really speak for what was the most popular major, but there was a very popular cross option between the business school and school for service, which was global business. And then in the nursing school, we had a lot of students interested in nursing and the name speaks for itself and also a public health tracks [00:18:00] in terms of athletics.

I will be completely honest with you. I’ve never done any sports in high school or in college. So only really gives you the most basic overview here. Drusen is a division one school in most. Most of our sports teams are division one. We are part of the big east conference and Georgetown actually won three national championships in division one.

So that was men’s basketball and 84 women’s cross-country in 2011 and then men’s soccer in 2019. An interesting fun fact about campus is that Georgetown recently built a separate gym only for student athletes where they can train and spend a lot of time in, I don’t, I’ve never been inside because I wasn’t a student athlete but there’s also a regular gym for everybody.

That has been around for quite some time. Another thing I do want to mention is if you’re not interested in professional sports, would you have a lot of intramural sports as well? Which I think we’ll discuss that a little bit later. Now I’m going to click through and hope that this loads are we all seeing a different side?

Yes. Wonderful. [00:19:00] Great. My wifi is cooperating. So in terms of extracurriculars, as we mentioned, just in the advocacy section alone, we have more than a hundred student organizations at Georgetown. So there’s over 500 in total. There are a 10th fraternities and sororities. And one caveat I do want to add about that is that Greek life is not efficient sanctioned by Georgetown university because it is considered not to be aligned with Georgetown university’s Jesuit values in practice.

This means that, of course Greek life is not banned, but it’s not funded by the university. They don’t have their own university provided housing there. So quite active on campus, you do have a lot of opportunities to get involved. For instance, in school foreign service GPE, the foreign service sorority was quite active.

They were very professionally oriented. They, organize a lot of events. We were very present. In terms of student housing more than 75% of undergraduates will live on campus. If I’m not mistaken, my information is from 2019, but the first few years students are required to live on campus.

And then the [00:20:00] fourth year seniors have the option to stay on campus or go off campus. That said a lot of the options available to you after freshman year or apartment style. So you would be located either immediately on campus or just be on campus gates. And while you’re technically a student housing, you get a much sort of different sense of apartment style.

Living is basically like living in an apartment with your friends, but Georgetown university’s or landlord. And in DC, it’s really tough to find housing. So a lot of seniors end up opting into that fourth year on campus housing option, because it’s much simpler to try to get that set up than to try to find an apartment elsewhere.

That’s affordable. As mentioned, we have. 39 clubs, sports over eight uncles for groups, 127 advocacy, social justice clubs. I just wanted to briefly mention the ones that I was a part of, just because I feel like that’s that’s something I can speak to. So I was involved with primarily three organizations.

I was, I worked for the Caravel, which is one of the student newspapers on campus, specialized in [00:21:00] international politics for years. I was also involved with the student government in different capacities, in different committees throughout my time in Georgetown. And I was part of an advocacy group called una Georgetown, which lobbies the us Congress for issues related to the UN things like funding, the UN or funding, certain missions, supporting education about what the UN does.

Last, but not least traditions. I will be honest with you. I know maybe four of the ones listed on the slides. So I’ll just speak to you about the ones that are the most common was, will know that I participated in Georgetown day is really the biggest one. It’s the last day of classes in the spring.

You have, it basically begins with, the moment everyone gets up. If barbecue food trucks, a lot of clubs will organize the best throughout the day. There’s usually a giant blown up doll of jacket bulldog, which is the Georgetown mascot on Keeley lawn there’s games, competitions, things like that.

Some of the sort of classic Georgetown bucket list [00:22:00] items that everyone tries to check off before they graduate which I did all in may of 2019, the year I graduated is to. Quote, unquote, swim really stand in the Dole green fountain run up the steps. We also have the statue of her founder, John Carroll, and your supposed to climb it and sit in there in his lap, even though technically that’s not allowed.

Another big tradition is to celebrate your 21st birthday at tombs, which is the students diner restaurant right off campus. Yeah. Thanks Faraj. So we’re going to send you guys a quick poll before we have the main tomorrow, both. Explain your why they chose Georgetown planning to apply to Georgetown and where is it in your college list of stuff?

I’m going to send that out and then wait a few seconds for you guys.

It looks like most of you guys are still deciding so far. And the rest of you guys [00:23:00] have either on your college list and your top three or your top choice. So that’s really great to see in the interest of time, I’m just gonna close the poll now and then Brindley your next step. So why did you choose Georgetown?

Yeah, so I chose Georgetown because I knew when I was applying that I was interested in history and government. And those departments are really strong at Georgetown. And obviously you’re in Washington, DC. And what better place to study us history and politics than a place where you can go and intern on Capitol hill in the morning and go to class at night or do research at the national archives or something.

So those resources and the experience of being in DC were really important and influential in my decision. Awesome. I’ll put the side for you here. And then tomorrow, why did you choose Georgetown actually had a very similar reason, which is that I knew I wanted to study international relations and Georgetown has one of the top programs in the country and DC [00:24:00] offers a lot of opportunities to pursue professionally while you’re studying.

So I ended up doing two internships on during my time there during the semester. Awesome. Yeah. Great responses guys. Okay. So before tomorrow, tell us more about the college app process specific at Georgetown. We have another poll for you guys. It’s the last one. So where are you all currently in the college app process?

This is just to gauge what kind of questions you guys will be sending in later on and just see where everyone is right now. So I just sent out that poll and then I’ll wait a few more seconds for you guys to put in your.

all right. Looking at the poll results so far, it seems like a lot of you guys are working on your college list. Personal statements were studying for standardized testing. It looks like everyone started the process a little bit, which is really great. Looks like you guys are all getting ahead and, getting ready to.

So I’m going to close [00:25:00] that poll. And then tomorrow back to you. So in terms of the actual application process Georgetown is an early action school. So that means you can apply early by November 1st, but it’s not a binding decision. So you’re still free to apply to other private universities. If you want to.

The regular decision deadline is pretty standard early January. I applied early action and I got accepted in mid December. At least in back in 2015, the way that they let you know was through an envelope in the mailbox. So that was a very stressful couple of weeks there. I remember checking every day for all of December and fill it arrives.

And as you may or may not know, Georgetown is not actually on the common app, so you will be, sorry, you’re filling out a completely separate application. But it’s quite similar to what the common app asks for. It’s just a separate form online. That said you will be writing. A couple of essays.

I would say that Georgetown is on the heftier end in terms of essay numbers. So you will have one long essay, which for all intents and purposes is your common app essay asks a very similar [00:26:00] question and you’re generally free to reuse the prompt. You will have one school specific essay. So depending where you apply, they will ask you different questions.

The school Ford service, where I went, asks you to discuss a global issue and to explain how you would try to resolve it. So their goal is to really understand why you’re interested in attending the school. You’re saying you want to attend to in the interest of time, I’m not going to dwell too much on this.

I will just say that on our bulls-eye blog, we do have a post breaking down how to write your Georgetown essays, that Brinley and I co-authored. So if you’re interested in more information, so free to check that out. And as you see on the slide here, our acceptance rate at Georgetown is about 15%.

It sort of hoppers up and down every year, but and it tends to be a little bit lower in the early round, but not too much. And in terms of size or something is I was in medium-sized school. So you have 3003 and a half thousand people approximately accepted every year. Hopefully there we go.

So these are your, sort of your average profile of an admitted student.[00:27:00] As you can say, it’s pretty high up there in terms of GPA. You have above average sat and act scores. I will just quickly give you my stats, cause I know that’s something I was wanting to hear from people. When I was going through the process I was in that 3.3 0.9 range for my GPA.

I actually had to look this up today before this webinars, because I didn’t remember any of this. You forget these things so quickly. My sat was out of 2,400 points because I’m that old. But I had approximately a 1480 on the math and the verbal sections which should give you a good approximation.

So it falls as you see, like right in the middle of that range for the average. Under normal circumstances, Georgetown usually asks for three subject tests, sat subject tests. I don’t know if they’ve officially announced what they will be doing about that this year, given the situation. I would imagine that they will be more flexible but they did, they used to be known for asking for a lot of subject tests that was there a distinction in terms of financial aid you have the pretty standard [00:28:00] process of applying for financial aid.

You’ll be filling out your FAFSA, the college board documents, like your CSS profile. I can’t speak personally. To financial aid, because I was lucky enough that my parents were able to support me in a way that I didn’t have to take out any loans. But I did have two of my best friends who were both able to apply to see financial aid from Georgetown.

And just one general piece of advice I just want to share is that you will have to really be proactive and make sure you always have all of your paperwork. And that you’re really learning to advocate for yourself, because as much as the university wants to help you and support you, they have a very small staff and have a lot of students who have very unique circumstances.

And so you’ll want to go into the process, always prepared to very clearly state what you need and why you need it. And to be persistent because sometimes you know, their mailboxes get flooded and you have to really keep, keep asking in order to get what you need. And that’s that first slide 15.[00:29:00]

Awesome. Thanks guys. That was a great presentation. So we’re gonna move on to the live Q and a. And so how that’s going to work is I’ll read through the questions that you submit in the Q and a tab, and then I’m going to paste them into the public chat so that everyone can see them. And then we’ll have brilliant Tamara, sorry.

We can have you guys probably all is just for organization sake. And so if you break them, we’ll also still have our speed round at the end. So as a heads up, if you’re trying to submit to the Q and a, and you’re not able to just check that you joined the webinar through the customer that came in your email instead of from the website landing page.

So just getting a straight shin, you best prepare for Georgetown. The general advice, always applies, dress in business casual or business attire come early be prepared to talk about why you’re applying to this particular university instead of just to a good university or a university in DC.

You’ll be interviewing with alumns. So you really want to have a good sense of why you’re applying to the school you’re applying. Because a lot of the times you’ll get someone who went to the same school. So you wanted to have specific [00:30:00] comments and questions that said don’t stress and tries to, memorize every piece of current events that’s happening.

For instance, if you’re applying to the school for in-service, you just really want to express to them why you want to attend this university and study the subject. I remember my interview, we talked about art for about 15 minutes because it turned out that we both had that hobby when we were applying to colleges and that had nothing to do with my major, but it wasn’t even bonded over.

So don’t be afraid. Go off script, if you feel like you’re connecting with your interviewer. Awesome. Yeah. Great insights question is how to try for a scholarship in Dorfman university.

Yeah. So Georgetown is a private school and like other private schools the Ivy leagues, the same way they do not offer merit scholarships. So you should be aware of that going in. The reason for that being everybody who’s applying is, very, or everybody is accepted certainly is very like [00:31:00] academically accomplished.

And so there’s not really going to be that much difference between people to award some people, merit scholarships, and some people not. Like we mentioned with financial aid financial aid is something that if even if you’re not sure if your family could qualify for it, you should still apply.

I found. I got financial aid some years and I didn’t, other years I found that it was most successful when I applied early. And when I had all of my documents, like very much in order, way ahead of time financial, the FAFSA and all of that, isn’t going to be do exactly at the same time as when your application is, but if you can get it turned in within about a month or so, that is going to help you.

You should definitely have it done a couple of weeks before their final deadline for freshmen. I think that’s somewhere around February or March. But the earlier you give it, just quite practically, like they. Only so big a pot of money, and once they’ve awarded it all, there’s none left. But like I said, even if you’re not quite [00:32:00] sure if you, if your family could qualify for financial aid, it’s worth it to apply.

Because not only are there like loans and things, but there are also like university grants and scholarships that are like need-based. And there’s also a work study program, which there are lots of student jobs, all across campus working in different offices or I work in the library and there’s lots of options for you there.

And that way you get paid, the government subsidizes your wages a little bit helps you earn a little bit of money that you can use to pay per year tuition, or just to support yourself as a student. And of course you can always apply for private scholarships and things. Great. Okay. Next question.

This might be a good one for both of you guys. So what are the classes slash seminars like? I can start it really depends. I would speak for the school for in-service at the beginning, the first two years, you’re a lot more likely to have [00:33:00] larger classes. So you’ll have, a hundred to a hundred people.

That’s usually for your sort of introductory economics government classes because their requirements. And so you have the entire freshman class essentially in your school sitting through those. But as you pick your major and your specialized, they get smaller and smaller. So I majored in international history and I have never had a class with more than I’d say, 12, 12 people.

It was actually 12 would have been a big number. If we’re more than four, we were happy because that meant, you, weren’t always having to answer every question the professor had. And so again, just to speak to specifically my major, which has quite, liberal arts oriented A lot of my classes were discussion-based and then you ended up doing a lot of the sort of preparatory work at home, which generally meant reading, just reading a lot, pretty much all the time.

Week to week, I would be, several hundred pages in my upper courses. Easy. And yeah, I think that’s really the main thing I would say. I would just add one thing for your language classes. You will always be in small classes, [00:34:00] so no matter how popular languages they will just make more sections.

It’s always very hands-on because as I mentioned earlier, Georgetown prides itself on it’s a language program.

yeah, definitely. I’d say my answer is pretty similar to tomorrow’s. We actually took a couple of classes together in our upper level history classes. A lot of the those like big core requirements that are required for everybody. You’re like, your problem of God, your introduction to theology and philosophy, government, economics, all of that.

Those are going to be on the bigger side. Like I mentioned, but discussion and kind of working with your peers test each other’s ideas and all of that is still prioritized even in those big classes. And really I’d say by like my sophomore year for the most part, and definitely by my junior year, I didn’t have any classes that were bigger than like 25 people.

And for the most part, they were pretty diverse, like a pretty diverse group of majors. Some [00:35:00] classes of course were specific to. One major by the time you’re in like the four hundreds. It’s not that common to have people outside the major come in, but it’s usually aloud. So you get to hear, people that are coming from different disciplines and different perspectives, and that’s always really interesting.

And definitely in those liberal artsy kind of classes history, government, senior advanced seminars, like those are going to be very reading, very writing based. One advantage if you do that is in DC, of course there’s a lot of opportunities to do research on your own.

And so even as a sophomore, I got to go do original research for a paper at the library of Congress. And I thought that was so cool. And so it really depends on what you’re interested in, but there are a lot of those, a lot of them classes really integrate the DC environment and the city into the coursework in some kind of way.

Obviously depends on the discipline, but I really liked it. Thanks. Good. [00:36:00] Next question that I have for you guys is what are some of the best spots to study slash eat? So I literally had to sit down and make lists for this. I will tell you guys, one thing in terms of eating Georgetown does only have one dining hall, which, we’re usually made fun of for that, because most universities do have more than one.

That said they renovate, renovated it a couple of years into my undergrad time. And although I didn’t use it as much after I got off the meal plan I heard only good things of what it became. Don’t get too discouraged. One interesting thing that Georgetown has for both studying and eating is the Corp, which is a student run, coffee shop chain.

They basically have a location every mean building on campus. So in the library in the student lounge in a couple of other buildings, so essentially you always have access to coffee and bagels and salads and things like that. It’s completely staffed by students so you can always work there if you’re interested.

They’ve been criticized for having overpriced coffee, but it’s not more overpriced than all the other coffee in DC. And it’s closer. And I would say for [00:37:00] favorite place to study for me personally, it was the Healey family student center, which is the students that are on campus. They have the coffee shop location.

They have a Tavern there. If you want to have a full lunch or dinner they have a fireplace which is pretty nice in the winter. And it’s just like a nice new space that they recently built quite centrally located. Great. What are some programs for minorities? I use students of color and first gen.

Yeah. So I can take this. I would definitely look into, especially if you’re applying the Georgetown scholars program and the community scholars program both of those are very oriented to Reaching out and helping first gen low income and like people of color transition into the college experience.

So I know the Georgetown scholars program is a little bit smaller. But they provide some like financial support and like kind of resource support. There’s individual seminars and programs and things that you can go to.[00:38:00] And I think, I don’t remember if it’s both programs or just the community scholars program either way, at least one of those can come to campus early and take some summer classes.

And so you’re already in the den. You have some time just to get used to the campus work with different staff members on campus that can help you adjust to the college experience. Beyond that there are also like the women’s resource center, the LGBT Q research resources center, excuse me.

Those are pretty big on campus. And then I would also recommend reaching out to cultural groups on campus. They, I know we have a black students association. There’s a few houses off campus that are specifically geared towards Latino women or like just people of color, generally.

Lots of different like specific kind of housing arrangements and things like that. And then I would also say if you are a [00:39:00] religious minority, which often at Georgetown, who’s not Catholic by the way, you do not have to be Catholic or even religious to apply. But they do have a really great infrastructure for religious diversity.

And interreligious understanding there are really great religious student organizations, like a really big Jewish student association a Muslim student association, Hindu student association that are very big and active on campus and connect can connect you to like both like faith-based and also just social and practical needs as well.

So if any of those apply to you, I would look those up as you’re getting to campus and reach out to the leaders of those organizations who can also connect you better to some of the other resources that may be on campus.

Something says I think I just lost.

[00:40:00] Let’s see, I’m going to submit the next question in the chat. So that question was, what are the IB requirements? Can you guys hear me? Okay. You guys dropped off for a minute. Just want to make sure we can hear you. Okay, fantastic. So in terms of IB requirements Georgetown, usually awards credit for six or nines or on higher level IB exams.

And also to generally for four or five on AP exams. But it does depend on department. So really what you should be doing is going on the university website and just making sure that the school and or major that you’re interested in perhaps they’ve shared some information about that. So you wouldn’t look at the Georgetown undergraduate bulletin for test specific policies.

It will really depend on a case by case basis. So you’ll want to see what the department. Yeah, quick fix and something about halfway through the queue. So I guess after this webinar, I do also want to let you guys know about how you [00:41:00] can get help on your college apps and also get involved with full-size if you want to get in touch with Brinley or Tamera, Tamara, sorry.

For getting help on your methods. So apples that we have two advising plans, we have the starter plan, the scholar plan. And so they’re both in the form of these monthly subscriptions where you can choose what to request, or you can Sue the school and we’ll not have an advisor going to that school and get one or two hours of advising each month.

And then, so what I’ve asked you to work with you on is the healthy with craft perfect for your applications and everything else with the college process, I’m going to send everyone here the link for how you can actually sign up and just start with an advisement. So I’ll keep that up. Just you guys can click on it and get started.

In the meantime, I also do want to tell you more about Bullseye. So I’m in the past, we’ve had both clients get into Georgetown. You’ve also had them get into every Ivy league school and every top 25 school in the country. And then our rating out of 10 is 9.8. And that’s just because our advisors, people like brilliant tomorrow.

They really put a lot of care into [00:42:00] working with you. One-on-one they really want to see you do well in the process and make sure that your questions are answered and that you feel you feel okay during the process. So if you want to work with premiere tomorrow, and this is a really, I think it helps,

right? So I’m going to flip the sign. You can continue back with the Q and a. So the next question that I have for you guys is do they, so I guess does Georgetown, except some simply,

can you hear me. Yeah, we can hear you. Okay. Switch computers cause the other one’s slowed down so much. I couldn’t use it. Yes. Georgetown does have merit based scholarships from other places. You should know that if you do get merit scholarships, they will take it out of your expected family contribution first.

So say they, Georgetown gives you like 30,000 and you need to pay a total of 60,000 or so. And you get a $10,000 scholarship. They’re going to take that out of your expected family [00:43:00] contribution. So you’re not gonna no, sorry. They’re going to take that out of the Georgetown scholarship before your expected family contribution.

So your family would still have to pay the 30,000 Georgetown would just cover 20,000 instead of 30,000, if that makes sense. Like it’s good to seek out merit based scholarships, but you may want to Just consider those very carefully if you’re getting some, but not all of your aid covered by Georgetown, because it might not actually help you that much.

Unless you’re doing like all loans or you’re covering like nothing for you. Just think about the payoff of like effort to reward. And if you can get a scholarship, great. If you can get a scholarship that will pay you instead of the college directly, you don’t have to report it.

And that’s great. But be aware if they’re just going to pay the money directly to the school, because that isn’t going to reduce the money that your family is expected to pay. Awesome. Next question I have for you guys is a little bit more specific. So if someone said I’m from Afghanistan, so I [00:44:00] would like to know if there are any other African students currently studying at Georgetown.

If you knew any other students from Afghanistan or international students I guess I’ll take it first then if Brindley, you want to add I didn’t know anyone from Afghanistan specifically, but Georgetown does have a really large international student population. So I knew folks from Columbia, Venezuela, Jordan I think Canada, which is neither here nor there, but my own family is from Russia, so I’m actually first generation.

So there’s definitely a really large international student community. I don’t want to give you a percentage because I don’t want to overestimate, but it’s it’s a very notable presence I would say. Yeah. I didn’t know any Afghan students either, we’ve also not been there for a year, so that may have changed.

We, it’s a big, it’s a small student body relatively, but still a lot of people. So there definitely could be students from Afghanistan. I just didn’t know any personally, but Tim, Tamara, I didn’t know. Lots of international students. Yeah. [00:45:00] Awesome. Thanks for sharing guys. Okay, so probably one more question before we start off the speed round.

So this is more essay specific. The question is it really difficult to get into Georgetown? Is that a mind blowing experience to write an essay about maybe if you guys want to also discuss what you guys wrote about in your common episodes? I can share mine since I did the school foreign service.

And then Brently conducted about the college, this, we did write the print essays. So for the common app just to briefly tell you, I did end up writing about my experience as a first generation student, because I was, in middle school when we moved to the U S but that said, I know plenty of students who did not have something.

Like dramatically life altering who successfully applied and gore admitted to Georgetown. And I’ve helped plenty of those students in my two years as a college advisor. And when it comes to specific essays for your schools so the essay that I wrote, which was asking you about a global issue that I wanted to address was about domestic violence in Russia, my native country.

And I was advocating for more female representation in government to address that. The reason I share this with you is [00:46:00] because it’s really not about the sort of scope and importance of the issue so far. It’s more important, how it relates to you and your experiences. So it’s much more impressive to the reader.

If you can explain why it’s of all the things you could fix in the world, this is the one thing that you care about and that you’re passionate about. So if that means, community organizing in, I don’t know, Atlanta, Georgia that just because it’s not an international experience does not mean that it’s not valid, does not mean that you don’t have a good, solid reason for studying this international curriculum in order to be able to resolve this type of issue.

So really just make sure it speaks to your experience. You don’t need to have quote unquote, mind blowing different experience. It just needs to be well articulated and reflect who you are and what values you hold. Yeah, definitely. I would agree with that. You definitely don’t need to have some sort of mind bullying, like super unique personal experience.

For my kind of long essay, [00:47:00] I used my common app essay, which was about how as you can see, I’m a red head. And I always got asked if I was Irish or if I had a really bad temper. And so I wrote about how that kind of annoyed me because that’s not really my personality at all.

I’m very reserved. And so I just wrote about that experience and learning to I don’t know be confident despite not matching people’s expectations of who I would be. And also learning to be more comfortable with things like public speaking long time. So I had to just review that a couple of weeks ago.

And then for my shorter essay I applied to Georgetown college. So they’ve changed the prompts since I applied. Again like I’m old. But the prompt I applied was like, what are you, what kind of things do you want to study? And how can Georgetown help you with that? The prompt now is what does it mean to you to be educated?

Which can pretty much be the same answer. So if you have something in mind that, you want to study pointing out really specific things about the [00:48:00] program at Georgetown and also personal reasons why you like that topic can really help you. As we’ve mentioned, a couple of times government is a very popular major at Georgetown.

And so a lot of students might be applying saying I really love the show, the west wing or house of cards. And that’s fine, but you also need to have some sort of deeper. Like more personal values based reason for wanting to study that particular topic. Because as we’ve mentioned a couple of times Georgetown’s Jesuit values are really important to them.

And so if you want to study government, for example maybe come at it from a perspective of you really want to be involved in public service, and you think that this is a really effective way of problem solving. So all kinds of a matter of framing, it does not have to be a mind blowing, like really unique experience.

The thing that makes essays unique is the emotional reflection and self-awareness that you bring to those essays not necessarily the actual. Awesome. Thanks. [00:49:00] Good. So we’re going to move into the speed round basically. Really answers we’ll have you alternate and we’ll keep the answers under a minute.

Try to get through, we’ll just try to throw the rest of the QA. The next question I have for you guys is what do you think is the most part of the admissions process? I think that’s me some of the most important part of the admissions process. I would say your essays are a pretty important part because that’s the thing that you can most control when you’re applying, because you already have your grades, you already have your extracurriculars for most of you, you already have your test scores and essays is the part where you can really get into who you are as a person what’s important to you and get a little bit more of a specific, detailed picture as opposed to just numbers.

So I would say concentrate on that if you’re going to pick one, one aspect. Awesome. Next question. What is your favorite Georgetown tradition? That’s me. Oh, my favorite Georgetown tradition. Let’s see. I I always thought it was funny when people stole the clock hands. But. [00:50:00] I dunno, I guess maybe something that was really popular, at least when I was a freshman was like walking to the monuments at midnight.

It’s probably a 30 minute walk. And you get to, walk around the Washington or not really the Washington monument that’s a little far away, but like the link

in, or maybe the Jefferson. And so that was something I really liked. Next question I have for you guys is the culture highly competitive? I think it can be. But ultimately, you know what, every school, it can be competitive. It really depends on your attitude and the people you surround yourself with.

People, there is a lot of talk of stress culture at Georgetown because there’s a tendency to overload, not even so much on academics is extracurriculars because there’s this big pressure to, lend that internship in DC. Especially for folks who want to go on to work in government or in foreign service, they feel like they need to really keep building their resumes.

But I think it’s one of those [00:51:00] S as cliche as it may sound it’s as it’s all about what you put into it. So if you let that get to you and stress you out and overwhelm you, and, you’re sacrificing sleep in order to have that one extra thing on your resume, then yes, you will be stressed. And you will naturally attract people who are in that same sort of bubble.

But it’s always just important to remember that at the end of the day, About what you want to get out of it and not what other people think you shouldn’t be getting out of it. And that mentality switch really helps with managing some of that pressure.

Awesome. Next question. This might be a little bit longer. How can I see that in my application? That’s a great question. I think like I was just talking about making sure that you are as specific as you can be is something that I always recommend to students. It’s great. If you have a link of like experiences that are maybe around a similar topic or that you trace the development of some character trait or something those students with a really strong, personal narrative tend to [00:52:00] be really successful.

If you can link the different parts of your application together, I often use the metaphor like. Think of the different parts of your application than your essays as like windows looking in on a house where every part looks at a different room, maybe a different like area at the house, but when you looked in all the windows, like you’ve seen the whole house so the house is you and the different pieces of your application are, your essays, your activities, your test scores.

But if those are really cohesive and like really specific, and you’re really true to who you are and not who you think the colleges want you to be, you’re going to be more successful. Awesome. Next question I have for you guys is how did Georgetown help you for life after graduation? Okay.

That’s a loaded question. All right, let me try. So I’m currently in grad school. I believe Bernie is too. It helped me in so far as it like got me to focus really on what I wanted to do. And it gave me a really good sense when I went into international affairs. I didn’t really [00:53:00] know what that entailed career wise beyond, oh, you can go be a diplomat.

And it gave me a much better sense of the different pathways within that broad field. And that’s how I decided to keep going and pursue a graduate degree. I’m sitting in human rights now. So I went directly after undergrad for, a specific set of reasons. But I would say the main thing is to make something abstract like an idea of having your head of what you want to do in your job, a lot more concrete.

It gives you very specific avenues for how you can achieve that. And so that really sets you up for whatever next step you wanna take. Awesome. Let’s try to squeeze in one last question. So just ending on a good note what is your favorite thing about Georgetown? Oh, that’s also a big question.

I think that my favorite thing about Georgetown for one thing I met and married my husband there, so that’s a pretty big life change. I remember the wedding announcement and our international history class. Yeah. Yeah. So That was definitely unique, but I really liked [00:54:00] that the ads we’ve touched on before that the professors and the classes and the clubs and everything that you’re involved with can all connect together and also connect you to the broader city.

Students often talk about like the Georgetown bubble and it’s hard to get off campus, but if you like, put in some effort and like really choose your classes and opportunities carefully, you can really get a very well-rounded education that is both like theoretical in the classroom and also like connects you to the real world and real applications.

And Tamara was saying help you understand what you like and what you may want to do for your career going forward. So I think that it had a really good academic environment that set both of us up well for our future careers and lives afterwards. Awesome. Thanks guys. So that’s all of our questions.

We can add things up, so that’s the end of our webinar. And then if you guys do want to work with premiere tomorrow, I’m gonna resend that offer where you guys can actually sign up and actually just start working with them even as early as tomorrow. This is a really great [00:55:00] opportunity if you want their help specifically on your Georgetown supplements and also for your college apps in general.

So along with that, our next webinar is going to be actually tomorrow morning. So a different time than normal. We’re going to do it at 10 MP stream and that’s really to accommodate anyone who’s in an international time zone. Since it’s going to be our webinar and applying as an international student, which I know has been a super popular topic, just based on the different questions that I’ve seen from all the past webinars.

So I hope to see you guys at that session and thank you so much for coming out tonight. So hope to see you guys later and have a great rest of your day. Thank you guys. Thank you guys. Have a good afternoon.