George Mason University - What's it like?

[Anonymous]

I'd love to hear from anyone who can contribute, but I'm most interested to hear about how it feels as a "college experience"? It's no longer a commuter school, right? Is there an abundant social life there? Greek life? Do sports factor in all in terms of college cohesion?

[Anonymous]

DD is a GMU senior. We are local and due to her ongoing health issues, could not go further away for college. DD lived on campus for two years, off for two.

Pretty confident that my DD would dissuade most potential students - she complains about the lack of a campus social life and cohesiveness. DD is very introverted, so FYI.

DD went through sorority rush, decided Greek life wasn’t for her.

Although no longer a commuter school, DD complains that GMU is “boring.” Again, just one current student’s opinion.

DD actively dissuaded her HS senior cousin from accepting...

[Anonymous]

Like any college, it is what you make it. I grew up in Arlington and went to Mason. I lived on campus for 2 years and then got a townhouse within walking distance with friends. It was no different than being anywhere else. I joined a sorority, went to frat parties, was a tour guide, was in the dance company, on a club sport team, and I loved it.

An introvert can struggle on any college campus as easily as an extrovert can thrive on any college campus. GMU has everything any other large college does except for football tailgates. Students don’t really come together over the sports like they do at big 10 or SEC schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like any college, it is what you make it. I grew up in Arlington and went to Mason. I lived on campus for 2 years and then got a townhouse within walking distance with friends. It was no different than being anywhere else. I joined a sorority, went to frat parties, was a tour guide, was in the dance company, on a club sport team, and I loved it.

An introvert can struggle on any college campus as easily as an extrovert can thrive on any college campus. GMU has everything any other large college does except for football tailgates. Students don’t really come together over the sports like they do at big 10 or SEC schools.

This! GMU was a great experience for our DD who lived in the dorms all four years. GMU has an xlnt computer science program (off the top of my head the best known are: engineering; animation; serious game design; economics and computer science, but it is huge so there is something for everyone. She had no interest in greek but made friends in her major and dorm. All of her friends lived on campus except one whose parents leased a townhouse near campus (it can be expensive). There are a lot of graduate students on campus, as well. It is getting more difficult to get in, year by year. I know several Nova families who were disappointed. 75th percentile for enrolled students last year had a 3.9; the median was a 3.7, and the bottom 25th percentile had a 3.4. ACT was 30 at 75th percentile, which is where you need to be if applying from Nova. Check out the Honors program if you qualify. It provides distinct perks. One of the nice things about GMU is that the Commonwealth keeps pumping money into it to grow so DD's dorms were like hotel rooms. The computer department was state of the art. The downside is that she experienced never-ending construction while she was there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like any college, it is what you make it. I grew up in Arlington and went to Mason. I lived on campus for 2 years and then got a townhouse within walking distance with friends. It was no different than being anywhere else. I joined a sorority, went to frat parties, was a tour guide, was in the dance company, on a club sport team, and I loved it.

An introvert can struggle on any college campus as easily as an extrovert can thrive on any college campus. GMU has everything any other large college does except for football tailgates. Students don’t really come together over the sports like they do at big 10 or SEC schools.

This! GMU was a great experience for our DD who lived in the dorms all four years. GMU has an xlnt computer science program (off the top of my head the best known are: engineering; animation; serious game design; economics and computer science, but it is huge so there is something for everyone. She had no interest in greek but made friends in her major and dorm. All of her friends lived on campus except one whose parents leased a townhouse near campus (it can be expensive). There are a lot of graduate students on campus, as well. It is getting more difficult to get in, year by year. I know several Nova families who were disappointed. 75th percentile for enrolled students last year had a 3.9; the median was a 3.7, and the bottom 25th percentile had a 3.4. ACT was 30 at 75th percentile, which is where you need to be if applying from Nova. Check out the Honors program if you qualify. It provides distinct perks. One of the nice things about GMU is that the Commonwealth keeps pumping money into it to grow so DD's dorms were like hotel rooms. The computer department was state of the art. The downside is that she experienced never-ending construction while she was there.

Baloney. Mason accepted 84 percent of FCPS applicants last year and 86 percent of Arlington applicants. No way these kids all had a 30 on the ACT!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like any college, it is what you make it. I grew up in Arlington and went to Mason. I lived on campus for 2 years and then got a townhouse within walking distance with friends. It was no different than being anywhere else. I joined a sorority, went to frat parties, was a tour guide, was in the dance company, on a club sport team, and I loved it.

An introvert can struggle on any college campus as easily as an extrovert can thrive on any college campus. GMU has everything any other large college does except for football tailgates. Students don’t really come together over the sports like they do at big 10 or SEC schools.

This! GMU was a great experience for our DD who lived in the dorms all four years. GMU has an xlnt computer science program (off the top of my head the best known are: engineering; animation; serious game design; economics and computer science, but it is huge so there is something for everyone. She had no interest in greek but made friends in her major and dorm. All of her friends lived on campus except one whose parents leased a townhouse near campus (it can be expensive). There are a lot of graduate students on campus, as well. It is getting more difficult to get in, year by year. I know several Nova families who were disappointed. 75th percentile for enrolled students last year had a 3.9; the median was a 3.7, and the bottom 25th percentile had a 3.4. ACT was 30 at 75th percentile, which is where you need to be if applying from Nova. Check out the Honors program if you qualify. It provides distinct perks. One of the nice things about GMU is that the Commonwealth keeps pumping money into it to grow so DD's dorms were like hotel rooms. The computer department was state of the art. The downside is that she experienced never-ending construction while she was there.

Baloney. Mason accepted 84 percent of FCPS applicants last year and 86 percent of Arlington applicants. No way these kids all had a 30 on the ACT!

Apparently you are new at this. This is SCHEV. State Council of Higher Education. Here is the link to GMU with the 30 mentioned at the 75th percentile. My DC had a 32. You should also know that the percentage of acceptances in Virginia are inflated due to the fact that the public high school counselors (paid by the state and have a reputation to consider with these institutions) guides the Virginia students to the most appropriate Virginia school. They will not be encouraging if you have a B+ student. They will not file a satisfactory letter of recommendation (and yes they do write one). And they certainly will not sign off on the most rigorous box. It is their job to match public high school students with the best public universities if that is the route the parents choose.

Insert any private or public four year institution and you can see last year's incoming stats of students who actually arrived. It is a very useful tool for parents in Virginia. https://research.schev.edu/enrollment/B10_FreshmenProfile.asp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like any college, it is what you make it. I grew up in Arlington and went to Mason. I lived on campus for 2 years and then got a townhouse within walking distance with friends. It was no different than being anywhere else. I joined a sorority, went to frat parties, was a tour guide, was in the dance company, on a club sport team, and I loved it.

An introvert can struggle on any college campus as easily as an extrovert can thrive on any college campus. GMU has everything any other large college does except for football tailgates. Students don’t really come together over the sports like they do at big 10 or SEC schools.

This! GMU was a great experience for our DD who lived in the dorms all four years. GMU has an xlnt computer science program (off the top of my head the best known are: engineering; animation; serious game design; economics and computer science, but it is huge so there is something for everyone. She had no interest in greek but made friends in her major and dorm. All of her friends lived on campus except one whose parents leased a townhouse near campus (it can be expensive). There are a lot of graduate students on campus, as well. It is getting more difficult to get in, year by year. I know several Nova families who were disappointed. 75th percentile for enrolled students last year had a 3.9; the median was a 3.7, and the bottom 25th percentile had a 3.4. ACT was 30 at 75th percentile, which is where you need to be if applying from Nova. Check out the Honors program if you qualify. It provides distinct perks. One of the nice things about GMU is that the Commonwealth keeps pumping money into it to grow so DD's dorms were like hotel rooms. The computer department was state of the art. The downside is that she experienced never-ending construction while she was there.

Baloney. Mason accepted 84 percent of FCPS applicants last year and 86 percent of Arlington applicants. No way these kids all had a 30 on the ACT!

Apparently you are new at this. This is SCHEV. State Council of Higher Education. Here is the link to GMU with the 30 mentioned at the 75th percentile. My DC had a 32. You should also know that the percentage of acceptances in Virginia are inflated due to the fact that the public high school counselors (paid by the state and have a reputation to consider with these institutions) guides the Virginia students to the most appropriate Virginia school. They will not be encouraging if you have a B+ student. They will not file a satisfactory letter of recommendation (and yes they do write one). And they certainly will not sign off on the most rigorous box. It is their job to match public high school students with the best public universities if that is the route the parents choose.

Insert any private or public four year institution and you can see last year's incoming stats of students who actually arrived. It is a very useful tool for parents in Virginia. https://research.schev.edu/enrollment/B10_FreshmenProfile.asp

I agree with you that the 84% acceptance is skewed by counselors pre-screening the kids that apply there so that most who apply are going to be successful. And I'm not as fluent in the SCHEV data as you. But, based on my kid's FCPS Naviance scattergram --- one of the top 5 FCPS HSs and one that is very close to GMU, you need a 3.2 to get in. I've looked at that scattergram a LOT b/c my DD is right on the cusp. The SAT score doesn't seem to matter much... as long as you have a 3.2, you are likely to get in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like any college, it is what you make it. I grew up in Arlington and went to Mason. I lived on campus for 2 years and then got a townhouse within walking distance with friends. It was no different than being anywhere else. I joined a sorority, went to frat parties, was a tour guide, was in the dance company, on a club sport team, and I loved it.

An introvert can struggle on any college campus as easily as an extrovert can thrive on any college campus. GMU has everything any other large college does except for football tailgates. Students don’t really come together over the sports like they do at big 10 or SEC schools.

This! GMU was a great experience for our DD who lived in the dorms all four years. GMU has an xlnt computer science program (off the top of my head the best known are: engineering; animation; serious game design; economics and computer science, but it is huge so there is something for everyone. She had no interest in greek but made friends in her major and dorm. All of her friends lived on campus except one whose parents leased a townhouse near campus (it can be expensive). There are a lot of graduate students on campus, as well. It is getting more difficult to get in, year by year. I know several Nova families who were disappointed. 75th percentile for enrolled students last year had a 3.9; the median was a 3.7, and the bottom 25th percentile had a 3.4. ACT was 30 at 75th percentile, which is where you need to be if applying from Nova. Check out the Honors program if you qualify. It provides distinct perks. One of the nice things about GMU is that the Commonwealth keeps pumping money into it to grow so DD's dorms were like hotel rooms. The computer department was state of the art. The downside is that she experienced never-ending construction while she was there.

Baloney. Mason accepted 84 percent of FCPS applicants last year and 86 percent of Arlington applicants. No way these kids all had a 30 on the ACT!

Apparently you are new at this. This is SCHEV. State Council of Higher Education. Here is the link to GMU with the 30 mentioned at the 75th percentile. My DC had a 32. You should also know that the percentage of acceptances in Virginia are inflated due to the fact that the public high school counselors (paid by the state and have a reputation to consider with these institutions) guides the Virginia students to the most appropriate Virginia school. They will not be encouraging if you have a B+ student. They will not file a satisfactory letter of recommendation (and yes they do write one). And they certainly will not sign off on the most rigorous box. It is their job to match public high school students with the best public universities if that is the route the parents choose.

Insert any private or public four year institution and you can see last year's incoming stats of students who actually arrived. It is a very useful tool for parents in Virginia. https://research.schev.edu/enrollment/B10_FreshmenProfile.asp

I've seen your posts before. Many times. I'm also well aware of SCHEV, and I've put four kids through NOVA high schools.

You assert time and time again, without any foundation to support it, that NOVA kids need to be in the SCHEV 75th percentile to get into a VA state school. It's simply untrue. Every single one of my NOVA kids got into VA state schools -- be it UVA, William & Mary, Tech, VCU, and JMU -- with with SAT scores below the 75th percentile of the entering classes. Every single one of my kids. Granted, none of my kids applied to GMU because it's local, but I can't imagine it would be any different. In fact, if anything it's likely to be less likely that you need to be in the 75th percentile to get into GMU from NOVA for a very obvious reason: GMU has more kids from NOVA then any other VA state school, because it is IN Nova. If all of those kids are in the 75th percentile or above, there aren't enough spaces mathematically for the below the 75th percentile students! Not everybody can be above average.

Also, in my kids' NOVA public high school experience, guidance counselors were not nearly as involved in "steering" them only to colleges where they thought they'd get in. If that were the case, there wouldn't have been so many rejections between them over the years.

Finally, that your kid got a 32 is great, congratulations, but that doesn't mean that everybody else who applied to GMU from NOVA did.

[Anonymous]

George Mason is a very good, solid school. The only reason the DCUM crowd puts it down is because it’s local. Kids from OOS and international don’t have the same issue - it has no trouble attracting applicants.

Most schools are this way. Students usually prefer not to go to a college in their own hometown - it’s no reflection in the quality of the university itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like any college, it is what you make it. I grew up in Arlington and went to Mason. I lived on campus for 2 years and then got a townhouse within walking distance with friends. It was no different than being anywhere else. I joined a sorority, went to frat parties, was a tour guide, was in the dance company, on a club sport team, and I loved it.

An introvert can struggle on any college campus as easily as an extrovert can thrive on any college campus. GMU has everything any other large college does except for football tailgates. Students don’t really come together over the sports like they do at big 10 or SEC schools.

This! GMU was a great experience for our DD who lived in the dorms all four years. GMU has an xlnt computer science program (off the top of my head the best known are: engineering; animation; serious game design; economics and computer science, but it is huge so there is something for everyone. She had no interest in greek but made friends in her major and dorm. All of her friends lived on campus except one whose parents leased a townhouse near campus (it can be expensive). There are a lot of graduate students on campus, as well. It is getting more difficult to get in, year by year. I know several Nova families who were disappointed. 75th percentile for enrolled students last year had a 3.9; the median was a 3.7, and the bottom 25th percentile had a 3.4. ACT was 30 at 75th percentile, which is where you need to be if applying from Nova. Check out the Honors program if you qualify. It provides distinct perks. One of the nice things about GMU is that the Commonwealth keeps pumping money into it to grow so DD's dorms were like hotel rooms. The computer department was state of the art. The downside is that she experienced never-ending construction while she was there.

Baloney. Mason accepted 84 percent of FCPS applicants last year and 86 percent of Arlington applicants. No way these kids all had a 30 on the ACT!

Apparently you are new at this. This is SCHEV. State Council of Higher Education. Here is the link to GMU with the 30 mentioned at the 75th percentile. My DC had a 32. You should also know that the percentage of acceptances in Virginia are inflated due to the fact that the public high school counselors (paid by the state and have a reputation to consider with these institutions) guides the Virginia students to the most appropriate Virginia school. They will not be encouraging if you have a B+ student. They will not file a satisfactory letter of recommendation (and yes they do write one). And they certainly will not sign off on the most rigorous box. It is their job to match public high school students with the best public universities if that is the route the parents choose.

Insert any private or public four year institution and you can see last year's incoming stats of students who actually arrived. It is a very useful tool for parents in Virginia. https://research.schev.edu/enrollment/B10_FreshmenProfile.asp

Ah, SCHEV poster. How we've missed you.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'd like to hear more about the campus life as well.

One thing I know is a plus for GMU is the access to internships/part time employment. In a lot of college towns, you don't have opportunities for real-world part-time jobs that can lead to full-time employment. In Northern VA/DC, the GMU students really do.

My DH who runs a sizable gov. program was talking just the other day about reaching out to GMU to get some interns. His office is full of higher level employees (14's and 15's). They need to broaden their employee base to have more developmental positions... GS 7's and 9's and 11's. GMU is a short distance from his agency, so it makes the most sense to reach out to them.

UMD has similar access. But, you aren't going to have the same options at W&M or VT or UVA.

[Anonymous]

Totally anecdotal but GMU grads do pretty well in the workforce, seem to get jobs easily after school etc. Lots of opportunities in the area for sure. That said, everyone I know who goes there goes home just about every weekend - probably every other week. Doesn't sound like a very fun experience to me.

[Anonymous]

So the SCHEV numbers show that roughly 17,000 of GMU's 27,000 undergrads are from NOVA (Fairfax, Loudoun, Arlington, Alexandria). If they all got a 30 on the SAT, that means that everybody else got, what, as 20?

[Anonymous]

Koch Brothers U

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure why I come on here to find useful information. The folks posting on the College threads are such smug, judgmental dicks. Can't have a thread without someone putting a school, or those who choose it, down.