Washington and Lee University
As you embark on your college search, you will probably contemplate questions like
“Do I want to attend a large school or a small school?”
“What should I choose as my major?”
“How far from home do I want to go?”
“Can my family afford private school tuition?”
The list goes on and on. Exploring colleges of all varieties and considering their relative advantages might lead you to conclude that you must compromise in some areas to find the ideal place to spend your college years.
However, Washington and Lee University holds a few surprises in this respect, offering opportunities more commonly found at comprehensive universities many times our size, while boasting all the best characteristics of the world’s finest liberal arts colleges.
We are, in a word, unique.
No other national liberal arts college can offer the curricular depth available at W&L – over 1,100 courses in 47 majors and interdisciplinary programs, including subjects rarely found in a small college, like accounting, business, engineering, journalism, or neuroscience. Our undergraduates benefit from the presence of W&L’s top-ranked law school, and we offer paid research opportunities through the R.E. Lee Undergraduate Research Program.
All of this is available at W&L – and more – yet personal attention and small classes are the norm. Classes are taught by our renowned professors, never by graduate teaching assistants, and the student body numbers only 1,770. With a student to faculty ration of 9:1, nearly 70% of all classes at W&L have fewer than 20 students.
Academic and extracurricular life on campus hums with the energy and experience our students bring from around the world – they come from 47 states and 50 foreign countries – and W&L students play an uncommonly substantive role in shaping their own experiences here, beginning with the wholly student-administered Honor System. With over 160 clubs and organizations to choose from, extracurricular life at W&L has more going on than many bigger schools, including many leadership and involvement opportunities for first-year students – new students at W&L routinely get cast in plays, write for one of our newspapers, get elected to student government posts, and otherwise dive in to life on campus immediately.
Major fundraising for Washington and Lee began in the 1790s when George Washington made the largest private donation (at the time) to an institution of higher learning – a donation that still pays part of each student's tuition at W&L. Last year’s $100 million gift to W&L from an alumnus continued that tradition of generosity and helps keep cost from being the deciding factor for today’s W&L applicants. Read about the prestigious Johnson Scholarship Program created by the gift, and learn about W&L’s no-loan approach to need-based financial aid.
But our resources support more than just superior financial aid programs. From expert faculty and state of the art facilities, to an uncommon abundance of academic, extra- and co-curricular offerings, W&L has accumulated experience and resources that allow us to offer an undergraduate experience few institutions can rival.
Enjoy exploring all that W&L can mean for you.
