What Do You Think About GMU? (Radford, Forest: home, colleges, to live)

[kevbros]

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

Do many kids from TJ go to GMU?

I think Mason has some kind of program with TJ where they can get college credit, but I don't know how many matriculate there.

I remember seeing numbers from TJ a couple of years ago. TJ sends over 100 kids to UVA each year, out of a class of 400 something. It sends another 100 or so to other VA public colleges with CWM leading the pack. So all in all that's around half the class. They also send about 50 to the Ivies, and that many again to MIT, Stanford, Berkeley,Carnegie Mellon, Cal Tech, Washington U and the service academies.

[Jayess1]

Originally Posted by kevbros

First off, we Virginians should be proud of the variety and quality of the Commonwealth's higher education system. Beyond that, I think the whole ranking/tier thing is fun to do, but not that useful. Each school is different and there is not a straight line spectrum from top to bottom.

This, many times over.
The days of a particular college or university having the "best overall in everything" are long, long gone, and the failure to understand that can leave today's students w/outstanding loans and little in the way of serious prospects. Applying for a given school based on a specific program or field is much smarter than going to ____ (fill in the blank) because "it's a good school" or "it's highly ranked" or, even worse, "so & so says it's a good school"...
GMU is no different - it offers a number of outstanding programs, others not so much, and does not offer anything in a number of technical fields (CNU is similar, btw, on purpose - Pres. Trible has said that he has pushed it to be "GMU like"). If you're interests lie in those areas, GMU is an outstanding choice.

[CAVA1990]

[SIZE=1][SIZE=1][LEFT]TJ Class of 2009:

College Accepted[/LEFT]
[/SIZE][/SIZE][SIZE=1][SIZE=1][LEFT]University of Virginia 244
College of William and Mary 207
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 161
Carnegie Mellon University 62
George Mason University 45
Cornell University 40
Duke University 39
Virginia Commonwealth University 33
Washington University in St. Louis 32
James Madison University 28
New York University 28
Johns Hopkins University 27
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 25
Pennsylvania State University, University Park 25
Princeton University 23
Georgia Institute of Technology 22
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 20
Northwestern University 19
University of Pittsburgh 18
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 18
Dartmouth College 15
University of Pennsylvania 15
Boston University 14
Brown University 14
University of Michigan 14
Yale University 14
California Institute of Technology 13
University of Chicago 13
University of Notre Dame 13
Vanderbilt University 13
Case Western Reserve University 12
Georgetown University 12
University of Maryland, College Park 12
McGill University 12
Tufts University 12
Columbia University 11
Emory University 11
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 11
University of Southern California 11
Wake Forest University 11
The George Washington University 10
Purdue University 10
Rochester Institute of Technology 10[/LEFT]
Stanford University 10
[/SIZE][/SIZE]

[CAVA1990]

It appears from the above that at number 5 GMU is a more popular place for TJ grads to apply than JMU and all Ivy League schools.

[JD984]

Originally Posted by kevbros

You might want to check the source for these numbers. TJ's class size can't be more than 450. Total enrollment is around 1800.

I think this was a list of acceptances, rather than of the number of students actually deciding to attend the schools in question. It wouldn't surprise me that more than 50% of a TJ graduating class was accepted at U. Va. I think more than 100 TJ graduates frequently end up deciding to go there.

[Jayess1]

Source: http://www.tjhsst.edu/curriculum/dss...ofile_2010.pdf, and yes, it's "accepted", not "matriculated". Oh, and class sizes run approx 450...

[kevbros]

Originally Posted by JEB77

I think this was a list of acceptances, rather than of the number of students actually deciding to attend the schools in question. It wouldn't surprise me that more than 50% of a TJ graduating class was accepted at U. Va. I think more than 100 TJ graduates frequently end up deciding to go there.

Right. And because not that many actually went to Mason, it would seem to be a popular back-up choice.

[CAVA1990]

Originally Posted by kevbros

Right. And because not that many actually went to Mason, it would seem to be a popular back-up choice.

Are there any stats on where they actually went?

[VTHokieFan]

The interesting about Radford and VT is that they're only about 15% off in acceptance percentage points. VT lets in nearly 70% and Radford 85%.

[hilsmom]

There was at least one TJ grad in my husband's electrical engineering program. I know because he apparently brought it up, ad nauseum, and annoyed the crap out of my husband. He thought that what high school he went to belonged on his resume past college graduation.

I'm not saying this guy was representative of the rest of the student body in any way, shape or form, but this particular TJ grad at Mason was a toolbox.