Virginia vs. Maryland for Universities

[Anonymous]

If it’s based strictly on colleges, then VA and I say this as someone that lives in MD. I don’t think the outcome of graduating from JMU, VA Tech, or even UVA would be much different than Towson, UMCP, or UMD if your child is staying in the area. Lots of small business owners are alums of the local schools of their state and lots of local organizations will have people working there that went to school in MD, DC, and VA. The difference to me is that there are more schools/seats in VA than in MD for similar tier schools even factoring in the population difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA and WM are are pretty expensive for instate

So?

I guess it matters to some UMCP is $10,000 tuition and fees, UVA is $18,000.

it's something to think about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If it’s based strictly on colleges, then VA and I say this as someone that lives in MD. I don’t think the outcome of graduating from JMU, VA Tech, or even UVA would be much different than Towson, UMCP, or UMD if your child is staying in the area. Lots of small business owners are alums of the local schools of their state and lots of local organizations will have people working there that went to school in MD, DC, and VA. The difference to me is that there are more schools/seats in VA than in MD for similar tier schools even factoring in the population difference.

Actually there are less sears per capita.

[Anonymous]

Virginia by a mile. This isn’t even contested.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I gotta be honest, almost nobody outside of Virginia has heard of W&M. I'm a professor who lives in the DC area and even a few years after I moved here I thought it was either some kind of weird hippy school or a catholic school. I finally figured out it was part of the public system and an actual normal university only after being a VA resident for five years. I've been at top universities in the northeast, south, and now here, and know hundreds of academics. I have never heard a single one even mention W&M. I doubt most faculty even know it is a school. That's NOT to say that it might not be a good school. But a lot of getting jobs is about name recognition. Most employers in LA, Atlanta, Austin, NYC has probably never heard of the school. In addition, a quick googling of the faculty salaries shows that it does not pay competitively to attract top faculty. Some may be there for location preference but I can't imagine any top people in their field choosing to take a 33% salary cut to go there unless they were desperate

You are a professor who hasn't heard of W&M. Right...
The lower pay is likely due to its concentration on undergraduates. Compare salaries at LACs and R1 schools. Of course LACs do not attact "top" talent. It's all in the definition of "top."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I gotta be honest, almost nobody outside of Virginia has heard of W&M. I'm a professor who lives in the DC area and even a few years after I moved here I thought it was either some kind of weird hippy school or a catholic school. I finally figured out it was part of the public system and an actual normal university only after being a VA resident for five years. I've been at top universities in the northeast, south, and now here, and know hundreds of academics. I have never heard a single one even mention W&M. I doubt most faculty even know it is a school. That's NOT to say that it might not be a good school. But a lot of getting jobs is about name recognition. Most employers in LA, Atlanta, Austin, NYC has probably never heard of the school. In addition, a quick googling of the faculty salaries shows that it does not pay competitively to attract top faculty. Some may be there for location preference but I can't imagine any top people in their field choosing to take a 33% salary cut to go there unless they were desperate

You are a professor who hasn't heard of W&M. Right...
The lower pay is likely due to its concentration on undergraduates. Compare salaries at LACs and R1 schools. Of course LACs do not attact "top" talent. It's all in the definition of "top."

Are you suggesting that I was lying?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I gotta be honest, almost nobody outside of Virginia has heard of W&M. I'm a professor who lives in the DC area and even a few years after I moved here I thought it was either some kind of weird hippy school or a catholic school. I finally figured out it was part of the public system and an actual normal university only after being a VA resident for five years. I've been at top universities in the northeast, south, and now here, and know hundreds of academics. I have never heard a single one even mention W&M. I doubt most faculty even know it is a school. That's NOT to say that it might not be a good school. But a lot of getting jobs is about name recognition. Most employers in LA, Atlanta, Austin, NYC has probably never heard of the school. In addition, a quick googling of the faculty salaries shows that it does not pay competitively to attract top faculty. Some may be there for location preference but I can't imagine any top people in their field choosing to take a 33% salary cut to go there unless they were desperate

You are a professor who hasn't heard of W&M. Right...
The lower pay is likely due to its concentration on undergraduates. Compare salaries at LACs and R1 schools. Of course LACs do not attact "top" talent. It's all in the definition of "top."

Are you suggesting that I was lying?

DP. Not sure you were lying. That implies an intent to deceive.

On the other hand, you sound like you have an exaggerated sense of your own insight. You’d hardly be the first academic to be wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I gotta be honest, almost nobody outside of Virginia has heard of W&M. I'm a professor who lives in the DC area and even a few years after I moved here I thought it was either some kind of weird hippy school or a catholic school. I finally figured out it was part of the public system and an actual normal university only after being a VA resident for five years. I've been at top universities in the northeast, south, and now here, and know hundreds of academics. I have never heard a single one even mention W&M. I doubt most faculty even know it is a school. That's NOT to say that it might not be a good school. But a lot of getting jobs is about name recognition. Most employers in LA, Atlanta, Austin, NYC has probably never heard of the school. In addition, a quick googling of the faculty salaries shows that it does not pay competitively to attract top faculty. Some may be there for location preference but I can't imagine any top people in their field choosing to take a 33% salary cut to go there unless they were desperate

You are a professor who hasn't heard of W&M. Right...
The lower pay is likely due to its concentration on undergraduates. Compare salaries at LACs and R1 schools. Of course LACs do not attact "top" talent. It's all in the definition of "top."

Are you suggesting that I was lying?

DP. Not sure you were lying. That implies an intent to deceive.

On the other hand, you sound like you have an exaggerated sense of your own insight. You’d hardly be the first academic to be wrong.

Well, I'm not wrong that hundreds of colleagues have never mentioned the school, whereas I hear of flagship state universities all the time, and even George Mason. I could definitely be wrong that employers haven't heard of it outside of the state. But normal people and faculty do not seem to have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I gotta be honest, almost nobody outside of Virginia has heard of W&M. I'm a professor who lives in the DC area and even a few years after I moved here I thought it was either some kind of weird hippy school or a catholic school. I finally figured out it was part of the public system and an actual normal university only after being a VA resident for five years. I've been at top universities in the northeast, south, and now here, and know hundreds of academics. I have never heard a single one even mention W&M. I doubt most faculty even know it is a school. That's NOT to say that it might not be a good school. But a lot of getting jobs is about name recognition. Most employers in LA, Atlanta, Austin, NYC has probably never heard of the school. In addition, a quick googling of the faculty salaries shows that it does not pay competitively to attract top faculty. Some may be there for location preference but I can't imagine any top people in their field choosing to take a 33% salary cut to go there unless they were desperate

You are a professor who hasn't heard of W&M. Right...
The lower pay is likely due to its concentration on undergraduates. Compare salaries at LACs and R1 schools. Of course LACs do not attact "top" talent. It's all in the definition of "top."

Are you suggesting that I was lying?

DP. Not sure you were lying. That implies an intent to deceive.

On the other hand, you sound like you have an exaggerated sense of your own insight. You’d hardly be the first academic to be wrong.

Well, I'm not wrong that hundreds of colleagues have never mentioned the school, whereas I hear of flagship state universities all the time, and even George Mason. I could definitely be wrong that employers haven't heard of it outside of the state. But normal people and faculty do not seem to have.

I'm an academic also--it's definitely on the radar in my world and viewed very positively. Whenever we get a grad application from there it gets noticed positively, the candidate has a very strong chance for both admission and funding and we are more likely willing to waive the 3.0 minimum GPA. W&M consistently produces some of our strongest students. But it may be field specific--it's got a fantastic reputation in public policy, history, government, international relations, business, computer science, and a range of other STEM and social sciences. I'm not as versed in the humanities to know where it stands there. It's also a weird school in that it's sort of like a liberal arts college, has only 6000 undergrads and a small handful of grad programs, but it's a public institution. So on a sheer numbers basis in this area you're more likely to run into a Mason grad (44000) than a W&M one.

I wouldn't default trust the academic perspective on colleges and careers just because we work in them--on average, we spent our 20s in PhD programs working in labs and research centers rather than non-academic careers (as also did most of our quirky social circles). Thus we may may have gaps in our grasp of "normal knowledge" of people who are building careers in the non-academic/research world, interacting with hiring managers, sitting in on job interviews. We tend to know the schools that are either well-represented in our fields or big enough to produce a bunch of students. So, so much better to just go to schools' data--and their program websites for program-specific data-- and look at job placement and job trajectories than to trust a random faculty perspective. In our program, our program manager who tracks and culls alumni data can tell you more about where students end up because faculty tend to know those particular students who keep in touch and tend to be a kind of binary group--the most successful ones and the ones struggling to find meaningful work.

[Anonymous]

I don't think anyone has even mentioned VCU. Living in VA gives you the unique opportunity to go to a highly ranked art school (VCU Arts) at an in-state public U cost. Also VCU is really strong in health sciences with a highly competitive guaranteed -admit med school program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live in Maryland ... and the only answer is Virginia.

Ditto

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I gotta be honest, almost nobody outside of Virginia has heard of W&M. I'm a professor who lives in the DC area and even a few years after I moved here I thought it was either some kind of weird hippy school or a catholic school. I finally figured out it was part of the public system and an actual normal university only after being a VA resident for five years. I've been at top universities in the northeast, south, and now here, and know hundreds of academics. I have never heard a single one even mention W&M. I doubt most faculty even know it is a school. That's NOT to say that it might not be a good school. But a lot of getting jobs is about name recognition. Most employers in LA, Atlanta, Austin, NYC has probably never heard of the school. In addition, a quick googling of the faculty salaries shows that it does not pay competitively to attract top faculty. Some may be there for location preference but I can't imagine any top people in their field choosing to take a 33% salary cut to go there unless they were desperate

Are you an adjunct? Or otherwise untenured?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Popcorn time!

This will get heated fast. I think in general there seems to be a slight majothat feel that while both states have great flagship schools in UVA and UMD, Virginia do had lots of other really high quality options of state schools of various sizes and strengths than MD, making VA the wiser choice.

UMD is not “great” by any measure. Mediocre-plus, at best. That said, Hogan is running circles around Old Ralph.

Mediocre-plus with a 4.2+ average GPA and 30+ average ACT.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry I just got the biggest laugh of the day about the "professor" who had never heard of William and Mary

Haven't you ever heard of James Comey even?

Oy this a new low for academics

Hide your head in shame dude, the ignorance is nothing to be bragging about here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UVA, VT and W & M....Vs UMD at top tier.

I would take Virginia over just about any state (at least outside of California).

Are you a fool? Massachusetts North Carolina way better