Another silly subjective list but since Wash U is ranked number 1 let's have some fun!



"Forget the Ivy League and Stanford — the smartest college in America is not what you might think.

Washington University in St. Louis came out on top of Lumosity’s annual ranking of the “smartest colleges in America.”"

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/14/these ... prise-you/

oops, didn't notice you had already posted.

also posted it over in the "St. Louis in the National Media" thread.

I don't have any numbers for you, but I know they're trying to boost them. They give the students free Metro passes and encourage them to explore the city.

They encourage exploring during the first 40 days https://first40.wustl.edu/Pages/Explore-St.-Louis.aspx

They encourage community service projects around town http://communityservice.wustl.edu/Pages/default.aspx.

They've been very engaged in the entrepreneur/startup efforts.
http://sc.wustl.edu/Programs/Pages/OlinCup.aspx

They're promoting the city

“I am constantly finding these hidden gems here,” said Shastri, who is studying international and area studies and Spanish, both in Arts & Sciences. “I chose Washington University for its culture, not for St. Louis, but there is a lot to discover here.”

http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/25684.aspx http://communityservice.wustl.edu/ourpr ... fault.aspx

Keep in mind that they're working against the perceptions out there that St. Louis is a dangerous and boring Midwestern city. I think just getting them to explore the city is a big help.

I hope it's helping. Of course the best thing to keep them is having plenty of jobs and opportunities. And all the stuff we talk about here in order to make St Louis a better city would help too.

I work in the early stage tech community at Trex and what we have found is that if that we can engage the students before they graduate and get them involved in the start-up scene or anywhere in St. Louis outside of the bubble of the University, then we have a much better chance of keeping them in the region. The problem is that the more Wash U is recognized as the great University that it is then the more recruiters from the west coast are here competing for the job opportunities. We are doing better over the last few years.

I heard Philadelphia had a program called "Campus Philly" that actively engaged students at its universities and worked hard to retain them post grad. If we could keep even half of our college grads (homegrown and out of towners), St. Louis would be booming right now. Youth retention is just not an area that St. Louis excels in and its causing our region to stagnate. A good number of people actually move to the St. Louis region, but unfortunately we lose thousands of youth every year to places like Chicago, Texas, Atlanta even smaller metros like Denver, Nashville, and Indianapolis. It always amazed me how places like the Research Triangle and other college towns across the US can get people to linger around after graduation, but St. Louis cant. I went to college in Tallahassee, FL (about 1/10th the metro of St. Louis) and it always surprised me how many people stayed in that little college town 3,4,5 years after graduation. Even if a young person doesnt want to set down roots long term in St. Louis, we cant afford so many educated people loading their U-Haul a week after graduation. The "linger effect" would do wonders for our image and economy.