A liberal arts college, situated on a "scenic" 40-acre campus, in Washington, Pennsylvania, founded in 1781 as Washington College (in 1865 it merged with Jefferson College of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania). It's the 11th oldest college in the United States, and according to the college fight song, "we are the oldest college from the Alleghenies west". Its eleven hundred or so students are primarily Pre-Health (many for only their first semester) or Pre-Law. "W&J", as it's called in short, will always hold a special place in my heart, since I'm writing this two days prior to graduating from such.
W&J has (last I checked) seven social fraternities and four sororities. The number of frats who still have their charters has been steadily dwindling over the past few years, since the Lambda Chi Alpha chapter (the one I had just finished pledging) got its charter yanked after being on double-secret probation. In my four years there, three frats either disbanded or were forcibly disbanded. In fact, by my senior year, the Student Activities Board was a more happening place to be than the Quads (or maybe I just wasn't getting invited to any of the cool parties any more).
W&J's most distinctive academic feature, besides its obscenely high tuition rates, is its January "Intersession". During the spring and fall semesters students take four four-credit classes (plus any applicable labs), but in January students take one class that meets every day for about three hours, equalling the total class time one would spend in any other class over a semester (thus it's also worth four credits). This allows professors considerable leeway in offering classes that they normally wouldn't be able to do during a normal semester--the average student spends at least one Intersession off-campus, often abroad. It also offers students considerable opportunity to imbibe alcoholic beverages. The college claims that around two hundred other colleges in the United States do the same (they won't say which, however), allowing students to take a class for credit at one of them, although I don't know anyone who's ever done so. (My personal favourite Intersessions were the two-and-a-half-week drinking binge where twelve students and a professor got into an RV and eventally found ourselves at the Grand Canyon*--yes, that was offered for credit--and my scientific glassblowing class in which one other student was enrolled.)
* Along the way, we also saw Graceland (on Elvis's birthday); the courtroom where the Scopes Trial was held (I got to sit in the judge's chair and bang the gavel; Hot Springs, Arkansas (the birthplace of Bill Clinton); and the Zuñi reservation.
Student life at W&J is best illustrated by the following joke, told to me my freshman year, and which every student knows both responses to: How many W&J students does it take to change a light bulb?
0. All of them: one to change it himself, and the rest to get drunk and bitch about how they're spending $25,000 a year* and the school won't even change a $@%#ing light bulb.
1. Only one, but it costs him $1500 for the privilege.
* Tuition as of the first time I heard this joke, several years ago. It's probably quite higher now, but I really don't care any more.