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Metro Stop on Campus

The Metro will be your best friend during your time at CUA. It is one of the two DC schools blessed to have a stop right on campus. Fares are reasonably low if you're heading into the center city, and almost all major attractions are accessible via the system (huge exception: Georgetown). You'll have to put up with bumps, delays, and poor customer service, but it'll get you from point A to point B.

There's also a new Capital Bikeshare stand near campus. You can rent a bike by the hour and return it at any Bikeshare location in the city. DC is a very cyclist-friendly town; the new Metropolitan Branch Trail, which will extent from Silver Spring to the Capitol when it's completed, goes right past campus.

Nonexistent, for All Intents and Purposes

There are no frats at CUA, aside from a few service and academic organizations.

As Strict as the Name Implies

It's the Catholic University of America. There are strict policies against underage drinking, drug use, cheating, premarital sex, etc., and they are enforced. Generally, RAs won't go looking to get you in trouble, but if your caught, you'll be written up.

I don't think any of this is unreasonable for a Catholic university. Also, to clear up one common misconception: CUA is NOT a dry campus. Those who are 21 and over can drink anywhere, including in dorms, and beer is often served at events for upperclassmen.

Now, what IS unreasonable, and thus the sole reason for the "C" rating, is the speaker policy. All on-campus speakers must be approved by the administration, and speakers who have previously expressed views contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church are often rejected. In practice, this means that it is often very difficult to obtain approval for pro-choice politicians to speak on campus, even on topics that have nothing to do with abortion. Don't get me wrong: I'm a pro-life Catholic, and I am 110% in favor of preserving the university's Catholic identity. But there's a balance that needs to be struck, and the current policy does not even come close to striking it.

Usually Mild, but...

DC usually avoids either extreme during the school year (the summer is a different story). It's not far enough south to be very hot beyond early September, but it's not far enough north to be deathly cold like Chicago or Boston. Occasionally, however, there are freak exceptions. My freshman year was the year of the forever-to-be-remembered Snowpocalypse, a blizzard that shut down the school (and the rest of DC, including the federal government) for an entire week.

Excellent, but You'll Have to Travel

DC has every type of cuisine imaginable, though prices are a bit high. Unfortunately, there isn't much around CUA; Brookland is a residential neighborhood, so the pickings are limited to a few pizza delivery and Chinese takeout places. Thankfully, dining meccas like Chinatown, Adams-Morgan, DuPont Circle, Georgetown, etc. are but a quick and cheap Metro ride away.

Ahhhh, CUA...

There are many things to love about CUA, and I mean that in all sincerity. We have some excellent professors who truly care about teaching, not just about their research. Class sizes are relatively small. CUA is first and foremost a liberal arts school, which means that your distribution requirements will expose you to large doses of the humanities, the natural sciences, and (best of all) classical philosophy--topics that teach you now only how to regurgitate facts, but also how to think, speak, and write (though you lose out on some of the benefits if you cover your requirements with AP exams). The Honors Program is first-rate, and there are some excellent study abroad options (including a very unique partnership with Oxford University). The student body includes a large number of truly smart, idealistic, and overall well-put-together students. The Catholic identity is, on balance, a plus: students have unrivaled access to the sacraments, and Campus Ministry (led by three beloved Franciscan chaplains) runs highly popular community service activities and recreational events for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Finally (and this should go without saying), the location simply cannot be beat. DC offers a myriad of opportunities for college students, and the challenge is to figure out how to take advantage of as many of them as possible without completely overwhelming yourself.

With all of that said, I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the bad. CUA has an embarrassingly low freshman and sophomore retention rate, and to a certain extent the numbers, bad as they are, don’t fully convey the true extent of the problem: many of the best students in the junior and senior classes express regret that they did not transfer when they had the chance. A detailed outline of the reasons for this problem would consume pages upon pages of text, but I will stick to the issue that I, personally, have found to be by far the most debilitating.

CUA's size and focus on the liberal arts are both blessings and curses. A large majority of the departments in the School of Arts and Sciences (essentially, anything that’s not Philosophy, Theology/Religion, Architecture, Social Work, or Engineering) are perennially underfunded, understaffed, and “under-studented,” meaning that many of the upper-level courses listed in the catalog have not been offered in years and probably never will be offered. This is not something that most high school students think to ask about when they make the college choice, but once you enter sophomore year you realize that it is a huge problem. The end result is that you end up filling your degree requirements with courses that don’t interest you, are irrelevant to what you want to do with your degree, and are very different from (and inferior to) courses being taken by students in similar programs at other universities. Such has been my experience with the Economics major: when I went to my advisor to express my concerns about the lack of upper-level Econ course offerings, he suggested that I fill my departmental electives with business courses (management, accounting, etc.) Business and economics are two very different fields, and getting a B.A. in Economics by taking business courses would be unheard of at other universities. Now, this issue may not be a problem for everyone. Some departments are better than others. But, for your own sake, DO YOUR RESEARCH, especially if you’re looking at a major that falls under the School of Arts and Sciences. Find out how many students are in the program, how many full-time professors work for the department, the course rotation, etc. It’s research I desperately wish I had done before choosing to major in Economics at CUA. One thing to keep in mind: the school will tell you that we are a member of the DC college consortium, which in theory should give students access to courses at other area universities. Unfortunately, this fact does not even come close to ameliorating the problem that I just outlined, because a) it is very inconvenient to travel to the other universities, and b) CUA erects hard-to-surmount bureaucratic obstacles that hinder students’ efforts to take advantage of these opportunities. So, don’t assume that the consortium will ensure access to your desired courses.