Seriously, has anyone outside of Virginia ever heard of JMU?
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Anonymous
It's funny, because NO ONE has been acting as if these schools are anything other than good (sorry, but they are better than decent) regional universities. You, and your snob cohort, are the ones saying demeaning things about these schools, for no apparent reason other than to make yourselves feel better for spending a shitload of money on a school that no one even blinks at anymore. Perhaps it's you who should stop making more of the schools you went to, because really - you're not all that. 
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Anonymous
Huh, things must be changing because my son and several other kids he knows chose JMU over UVA and W&M. They preferred JMU. |
Anonymous
Wow, how old is that issue and are UVA and VA Tech listed as well? |
Anonymous
Same. |
Anonymous
Maryland was and so was JMU and UVa |
Anonymous
Stumbled across this thread - went to high school in MoCo and JMU for undergrad. What an amazing amount of misinformation on this thread. The term "regional" is not coextensive sight the word "mediocre". JMU is a solid State School that serves, along with Virginia Tech, as the best second choices to WM and UVA for a VA residents depending on major. This is not conjecture - rankings by Kiplinger, Forbes, others bear this out. JMU when ranked against all Public Universities - and not just equally small ones, consistently ranks pretty well - top 25 generally, as does Va Tech. And it's majors are strong. Look at its Communications alum. Consider the latest Businessweek ranking of its undergraduate Business School: it ranks higher than GW, Maryland and VT both in terms of ranking and placement/salaries. Consider the rankings by Money, Kiplinger, Insider, USAToday - do they bear out a mediocre school? Whether JMU is a household name is only somewhat relevant. I'd argue its grads are not suffering its Harrisonburg location or small size.... |
Anonymous
JMU yes, CN no. Seriously. |
Anonymous
| I grew up in Florida and there are plenty of schools people on this board think are great schools i never heard of until,i came north. Schools like Bowdoin, Williams, Middlebury, Bates and most other Northeast SLACS never registered me. The schools outside Florida that i did know about were usually D1 football powerhouses that gave scholarships to classmates or because i had some personal or family connection, i.e. all five of the service academies, Notre Dame, Temple University, LaSalle College. Catholic colleges like Villanova and Georgetown were prominenly known because i went to a Catholic School. I asked my brother, who is a West Pointer, where he would've gone to school if he hadn't gone to West Point and he said University of Florida. The U.S. higher education system is unparralled for its breadth and depth. I imagine 98% of students choose school's first from the region where they live, or from those that friends and family members attended. Most of my family members who went to college (all from my father's side) attended either a service academy or state or Catholic institutions close to home: West Chester University, Chestnut Hill College, LaSalle College, Temple, Beaver College (now Arcadia University). Only one attended an Ivy. |
Anonymous
I dunno, I am from Orange Co, CA and I have heard of James Madison but mostly because of the women's soccer program there is well respected. The school is known to be a good school in Va. I went to Santa Clara U-outside CA no one has heard of it. |
Anonymous
VT, UMD and GW are mediocre schools... |
Anonymous
| Folks, no one's saying that JMU is anything but a regional school. But I think they've demonstrated that more than a handful of people outside Virginia have heard of it, and that it turns out perfectly successful graduates. |
Anonymous
Um, it does mean something, because it is directly responsive to the SUBJECT OF THIS THREAD, which is "has anyone outside of Virginia ever heard of JMU?" Dumbass. |
Anonymous
Not true. Graduate admissions committees DO care where you did your undergrad. You are more likely to get into a highly competitive grad program if you went to a high prestige / highly competitive undergrad school (in other words, not GMU or JMU). Yes, there are exceptions, but if you are planning on an academic career you'd better go prestige school all the way. |
Anonymous
Maybe this is field dependent, because in top tier STEM fields, where you went to undergrad is extremely secondary to graduate admissions compared to your undergraduate research experience, your letters of recommendation, whether you have published, whether you have won nationally competitive awards (Goldwater, for example), and your academic record. I know plenty of people who went to Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Caltech (the top 5 schools in my field) who didn't go to super elite colleges, some of whom are now faculty members. In fact, probably about a 3rd of the people admitted to top tier graduate programs come from "less elite" schools, depending on how you rank "elite" (i.e. regional schools and less competitive private liberal arts colleges). While this indicates that the pool of talented students is larger at elite schools, ~1/3rd is not an "exception." |
Anonymous
You are much more likely to do significant undergraduate research, get powerful letters of recommendation from recognized names in the field, get published, and win awards, if you attend a prestige undergrad school. Again, there are exceptions, but if you want to go into academia in any field, you are foolish not to attend the most prestigious undergrad program you can. |