George Mason University

GMU does not provide you with a college education, rather, a set of tools to help you work the system. A lot of the people in the career-oriented majors (IT, Business, etc.) care more about trying to gain an advantage over the next person instead of learning together and having fun for 4 years. With that being said, this school does not care about your grades, they care about the number of internships you are doing while juggling your schoolwork. When I talked to the Dean of IT & Engineering, he basically frowned upon me for having a 3.95 because I had no internships. When I rebutted him and asked what if one can't handle doing an internship during the semester, he basically said it's not our problem because it came out of his mouth, not the university's official statement.

Second, social life is a joke here. I had more fun in high school than in college. Here, nothing happens on campus; especially weekends. If you're ever on campus on the "weekends" (which starts on Friday since GMU is trying to phase out Friday classes in favor of a symmetrical Mon & Weds/Tues & Thurs system), you'll see it's almost a ghost town. Most of the food places on campus are closed, most students aren't on campus, and the people you do see on campus are either faculty or people studying. Even if it's not the weekend, there's rarely any student activities worth going to -- they're happening, but only a small handful of students participate in them.

Third, the staff here don't know a single clue about their job. Expect to get a run-around if you have to deal with Financial Aid or any other part of the Mason Bureaucracy.

Fourth, the student population is like high school, but with a twist. Expect to assume the same role you had in high school cliqueography (if you're a loner, expect 4 more years of lonerness, if you're the metalhead, you'll find more metalheads, etc.) but also play the race card. The mideast students that speak arabic will hang by themselves, the black urban students by themselves, the koreans by themselves, and so forth. Also, I forgot to add two new cliques: the night commuters who dropped out of high school but now decided to get a GED and a college education and the seniors who decided to go to college before they die.

This review is becoming quite long, so I'll end with this question for you: Are you more concerned about obsessing about every competitive edge you can get in the rat race and not caring about the memories (or lack thereof) you will make along the way or are you more concerned about having the chance to learn with your peers, getting an education, while at the same time having fun and maturing? If you fall into the first category, go to mason. The surroundings give you ample opportunity for that. If you're in the second category, do yourself a favor--go to another university. People have been saying the "Mason is on it's way up" motif since the day Mason opened but there's no indication that it's "on it's way up." Are you willing to throw four years of your life away into this motif which doesn't seem to have proven itself or do you want to spend four years of your life at another place which isn't "on it's way up" but already there?P.S. For those who are citing the living-on-campus student population numbers, please don't skew your numbers. While Mason may have the largest number of students living on campus in Virginia, Mason also has the largest student body in Virginia; more than tech, and more than william & mary's wimpy ~4000 body. Because each school's total number of students is different, you have to compare the numbers by ratio or percentage to give an accurate representation. With that being said, even if Mason's on campus body is the largest in Virginia, there are still more students living off campus than on.

2nd Year Male -- Class 2010

Collaboration/Competitive: A, Scholastic Success: F