As Al Gore and George W. Bush battle to see who will occupy the White House a few blocks from campus, GW’s already politicized campus is abuzz with political chatter. GW is the only college campus located in the epicenter of the government, yet the excitement of experiencing a presidential election in our nation’s capital appears to have little to do with many undergraduate students’ choice of attending GW.

According to admission statistics there is little or no correlation between the steadily rising number of GW applicants and the timing of presidential election. For the 1995’s incoming class, a year before a presidential election, GW received 10,469 undergraduate applications. In 1996, a presidential election year, GW received 10,356 applications – the only drop in applicants in the last six years.

The election had nothing to do with my coming to GW, freshman Prasanna Vasudevan said. It’s interesting to be in the middle of it all, but it did not affect my decision.

GW received 14,767 undergraduate applications for fall 2000, a three percent increase from 1999’s 14,326 applicants.

It’s nice to be in D.C. right now with all the excitement, but I wasn’t thinking about this scenario when I chose GW, freshman Niels Guiller said.

Most students who stay at GW four years will witness a presidential election. Even though the increase in applicants has little to do with being in D.C. to experience first-hand a presidential election, on average GW students still tend to be more politically active than other college students across the nation.