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College and University Discussion
Virginia vs. Maryland for Universities
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Anonymous
| VA may be true...if you are basing your decision only on public college options. If you are considering other factors like culture, politics, traffic, access to Philly and NY...things get more complicated. |
Anonymous
| Who picks their location just on that? I can see it being a factor if your kids are approaching college age but daily commute and home budget are really essential to most. Also remember merit aid makes some privates similar to in state. |
Anonymous
| Ah, yes, because Maryland is the gateway to culture, politics and the NE corridor... No, this is not hard. Virginia is the only option for a variety of in state colleges. |
Anonymous
|
For all of the complaining about MD, I am not really seeing much difference with VA, with one exception. Remembering that VA has 85,000 HS seniors compared to MD 60,000:
UMD serves the role that in VA is served by UVA and VT (State Flagship, which UVA is a little small for, and STEM center) ACT 25-75 UMD 28-33 UVA 30-34 VT 25-30 Pretty equivalent and could go either way depending on a student's area of interest. UMBC 24-29 = GMU 24-30 and serves a similar role with similar strengths. Towson 20-25 and Salisbury 20-25 are, perhaps a little behind JMU 23-28 and CNU 23-28, but not dramatically different. For kids wanting a small, liberal arts option SMCM 23-28 = UMW 22-29. The only real niche that MD can't match is W&M, but that is a pretty unique school that no other state can really match. |
Anonymous
This X1000. |
Anonymous
Agree with this. Another thing to keep in mind is that the MD state schools are less expensive than the the equivalent VA state schools for in-state. (and W&M is actually quite expensive for an in-state school.) |
Anonymous
| Virginia just has a much larger range of great state options, despite the PP's efforts to round up the scores of some Maryland schools to make them seem comparable. |
Anonymous
| Maryland is gross. Super ghetto. Stay away. |
Anonymous
| There are reasons to live in either state. But if your main criteria is public colleges and universities, it’s Virginia. |
Anonymous
|
The question is whether UMD can continue its movement upwards as a national research university. Same for UMBC.
If we look at public universities in general tiers in academics/research, over the past 20 years UMD has really moved up from the third tier of public universities (Univ. of Georgia, Univ. of Pittsburg, Delaware, SUNY) to the second tier (UT-Austin, Purdue, Wisconsin, Minnesota, UIUC, perhaps UC San Diego). Question is whether it can continue its upward trajectory into the tier of Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, Georgia Tech, UNC. It wouldn't be anytime soon and its improvement has slowed. UMD will simply never be similar to UVA/W&M, those are humanities and undergraduate focused schools with very light research. Currently Virginia is in a far better overall position though, which is weird considering that it is historically a conservative state for it to have such great public university options. UMD's somewhat mediocre USNews position hurts its image despite having top students matriculate there. And unless UMD somehow improves its endowment by a lot, gets a medical school and perhaps law school, it hard to move up on that list. Medical/pharma/dental/nursing schools brings a lot of federal research money and faculty, and law school brings a lot of prestige. It's too bad the medical school, pharma school, dental school, nursing school, and law school are in Baltimore |
Anonymous
What is this supposed to mean? |
Anonymous
Conservative ideology is generally against investment in public education, what else? Outside of the Northeast where there's a stranglehold by private colleges, liberal states have had a more robust university system than conservative states. UNC is an exception. California, Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois. |
Anonymous
Yes, you need to keep those subsidies flowing from relatively poorer taxpayers to richer college students because we all know that the left is interested in equality. |
Anonymous
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Va is a huge state and UVA is a very small flagship.
MD a smaller state and college park is much larger. Are you really going to pick a place to live based on Towson, Vatechh, umbc, jmu???? |
Anonymous
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Virginia— William and Mary and UVA—there are no comparable schools in Maryland.
UMD is probably more prestigious than VT. It is certainly harder to get into. |