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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Like any college, [b]it is what you make it[/b]. 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. [/quote]

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.  [b]ACT was 30 at 75th percentile, which is where you need to be if applying from Nova.[/b] 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.  [/quote]

[b]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![/quote][/b]

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[/quote]

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.

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PP, what is your race or your kids race?  Without that data point the 75% or median or 25% cutoffs for NoVA students are meaningless.
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