Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GMU is rating no. 1 "up and coming" university in the United States. The last Dean spent 12 years building state-of-the art buildings and dorms. GMU is on the cutting edge of STEM departments so its graduates get jobs.

It is no longer a commuter college which someone was referring to. Over 9,000 students live in the dorms. It is the largest university in the Virginia system (33,000 students, 12,000 of which are Ph.D. or Masters students) and has become much harder to get into than VT, JMU or CN. Go look. It's very impressive. I was surprised. The State legislature is pumping a lot of money into GMU because of its position on the Dulles Tech Corridor. GMU's graduates get jobs.

GMU's graduate schools are definitely top-notch, but I think its reputation as an undergraduate institution leaves something to be desired.

Anonymous wrote:^^ I'd like to know that too. There were many articles and also some threads here last week about the English major giving you the least value return on your investment.

And of course the hiring market for English majors is so much worse than it was when I was in college.

Anonymous wrote:I'm doing pretty well with my English and Women's Studies degree from a now 56k school.

Anonymous wrote:GMU is rating no. 1 "up and coming" university in the United States. The last Dean spent 12 years building state-of-the art buildings and dorms. GMU is on the cutting edge of STEM departments so its graduates get jobs.

It is no longer a commuter college which someone was referring to. Over 9,000 students live in the dorms. It is the largest university in the Virginia system (33,000 students, 12,000 of which are Ph.D. or Masters students) and has become much harder to get into than VT, JMU or CN. Go look. It's very impressive. I was surprised. The State legislature is pumping a lot of money into GMU because of its position on the Dulles Tech Corridor. GMU's graduates get jobs.

Anonymous wrote:No GMU propaganda here. 21:40 Your beef should be with those posters who had positive things to say about GMU (23:13; 21:44: 22:26; 12:30; 12:34) only be me met with derision and laughter. 21:40 claimed the GMU boosters were "trying to tear down other schools". They weren't - there were simply responding to the previous negative posts and correcting them where it was clear they were erroneous. A lot has happened on that campus in the last ten years. Go read the wikipedia page on George Mason since you seem to think someone is dishing out propaganda. Have you ever been on the campus? Tour? Did you know they get contracts from the Dulles Corridor companies for engineering and computer science work that actually pays the kids for their work even before they graduate? That GMU just signed on within the last year to a Scotland exchange program for computer science? Of course it is not yet a top tier public university. The thread went off tangent starting with 23:43, which may have been a joke for all I know. And what does Amherst have to do with anything? This was supposed to be about public universities. The simple fact is that GMU is rated no. 1 for up and coming universities and that can't be disputed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the fact remains that if you're looking at your child's true chances of getting into a school there are also plenty of schools that are just as good. Super selective schools are super selective for a lot of reasons. US News rankings significantly weight alumni contributions which is why institutions with either large alumni endowments or cultures of even minimal giving on a per student basis will rank higher.

Furthermore, word of mouth and "perceived" selectivity and quality of education are important in perpetuating a recurring high ranking. The reality is that the faculty at most lower first tier AND second tier institutions come from first tier national institutions and liberal arts colleges.

Finally, it is expensive to recruit students. mature institutions have a cultural and educational fit they are looking for. Many kids who apply are academically capable of the work, but fit is a black art, and it's easier to home in on that during the recruitment process than to attempt to retain a student.

I honestly agree with you. Except for a few schools in certain fields I believe the vast majority of 'tier one' and 'tier two' schools will offer a more than adequate education. I also agree that 'fit' at a school is very important. School is what you make of it. What bothers me is the GMU boosters who seem to need to tear down other schools to feel better about their school; It's like they have an inferiority complex. It probably shouldn't grate on me but it does, and I didn't even go to any of the schools mentioned on this thread!

The GMU boosters (and there are many on this thread because I made only one comment) are not tearing down other schools. They are responding because 23?43, 21:44, 22:26 and 12:34 all made positive comments about looking into GMU. Then 23:43 (second) 12:10, 12:50 and 9:14 made laughing, insulting, uneducated responses. The GMU "boosters" as you call them, are people who apparently have been on campus, know of it's enormous success and are trying to set the record straight. If anything, the positive people were much more kind in their comments than were the insulting anti-GMU people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the fact remains that if you're looking at your child's true chances of getting into a school there are also plenty of schools that are just as good. Super selective schools are super selective for a lot of reasons. US News rankings significantly weight alumni contributions which is why institutions with either large alumni endowments or cultures of even minimal giving on a per student basis will rank higher.

Furthermore, word of mouth and "perceived" selectivity and quality of education are important in perpetuating a recurring high ranking. The reality is that the faculty at most lower first tier AND second tier institutions come from first tier national institutions and liberal arts colleges.

Finally, it is expensive to recruit students. mature institutions have a cultural and educational fit they are looking for. Many kids who apply are academically capable of the work, but fit is a black art, and it's easier to home in on that during the recruitment process than to attempt to retain a student.

I honestly agree with you. Except for a few schools in certain fields I believe the vast majority of 'tier one' and 'tier two' schools will offer a more than adequate education. I also agree that 'fit' at a school is very important. School is what you make of it. What bothers me is the GMU boosters who seem to need to tear down other schools to feel better about their school; It's like they have an inferiority complex. It probably shouldn't grate on me but it does, and I didn't even go to any of the schools mentioned on this thread!

Anonymous wrote: What bothers me is the GMU boosters who seem to need to tear down other schools to feel better about their school; It's like they have an inferiority complex. It probably shouldn't grate on me but it does, and I didn't even go to any of the schools mentioned on this thread!

Anonymous wrote:But the fact remains that if you're looking at your child's true chances of getting into a school there are also plenty of schools that are just as good. Super selective schools are super selective for a lot of reasons. US News rankings significantly weight alumni contributions which is why institutions with either large alumni endowments or cultures of even minimal giving on a per student basis will rank higher.

Furthermore, word of mouth and "perceived" selectivity and quality of education are important in perpetuating a recurring high ranking. The reality is that the faculty at most lower first tier AND second tier institutions come from first tier national institutions and liberal arts colleges.

Finally, it is expensive to recruit students. mature institutions have a cultural and educational fit they are looking for. Many kids who apply are academically capable of the work, but fit is a black art, and it's easier to home in on that during the recruitment process than to attempt to retain a student.