Dear Dis-O Guide Reader,
How you use this guide depends on who you are:
a.) applicant
b.) accepted student
iii.) Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM)
d.) pre-med counselor
5.) friend or family
f.) just happened to pick this up off the coffee table
vii.) more than one but not all
a-b.) WashU is legen…wait for it…seriously though: we write The Washington Manual; we’re at the top of our research fields in radiology, neuroscience, immunology, genetics and genomics, and on and on (we studied sex so well Showtime made a TV series); we treat the toughest cases from the surrounding eight states; we serve the community as one of the largest nonprofit health care organizations in a city with no safety net and a state with limited Medicaid; our residency programs rock; our peers at other institutions (your future bosses) admire us…dary. Find yourself in the Perspectives section — a look at who we are, where we come from, and why we’re here.
iii.) Welcome to WashU. You’re here, so we figure you’re settled on why we’re great. (If not, see a-b above.) We agree. As an incoming student, you stand to gain the most from this guide. Get a sense of what to expect from courses in Medical School Experience. See where students live in Housing and how they handle Life. Peruse our picks for Food, Entertainment, Travel and Outdoors. Read the sage Advice of our faculty. In the interest of plausible deniability, we’ll save the really juicy tips and tricks for your second-year “big sib” mentors to tell you. (See p. 42)
d.) See, we’re way more than stats! We’re students with diverse personal histories and Perspectives, who immerse ourselves in this incredible Medical School Experience, with free-time spent enjoying Food, Entertainment, Travel and Outdoors in a great city, while facing some of modern America’s most pressing social issues (like Ferguson) head on.
5-vii.) Look at all the pictures of happy students. Sorry, there’s not a crossword in the back.
Whoever you are, we hope this guide gives you some sense of what goes on at WashU. We do a lot more than medicine, but like medicine, we do it really damn well.
Your “Dis-O” Editors-in-Chief,
Ian Ferguson, Liz Maidl, Mike Rizzo