The University of Mary Washington

This school IS hard to get into. I read a lot of comments from people that seem to tag the school with an "easy" admissions label -- don't believe it. The school has roughly 5,000 people, and you do need to be a very good student to be admitted. However, that does have it's problems;

For the most part, the student body is chock full of money. There are a lot of wealthy people here, and it shows in the overall stuck up attitude of the student body.

The "party scene" was never really that important to me, so I won't comment about it. With that said, there is an underground Frat here on campus, and they throw parties frequently around Fredericksburg.

The town: what do you expect? Fredericksburg has everything you could ever want in a town -- a beautiful "old town" area, and Central Park which contains just about every store ever invented. A major plus to the shopping center is that it is secluded from the campus, so the traffic is for the most part, isolated.

The campus is beautiful, however, do NOT let this mislead you. When I was on the college hunt, the beauty of this campus alone reeled me in. Do not make the same mistake I did! Make your decision based on the academics and involvement, not a few nice looking brick buildings.

Dorm life: Can't say that I like it. Internet has frequent problems and since the buildings are a hundred years old, there is a lot of wear and tear. Also, the parking is absolutely terrible. As a transfer student, I heard about 6 different answers to the question of "can I bring a car?". Freshmen cannot have cars, or overnight guests for the first semester.

The bureocracy here is unbelievably horrible; not to say that it isn't at every school, but the fact that 6 different people have 6 different answers to a general question like the car situation just shows how disorganized the administration is. Cops will ticket your car if it is left unnattended for an hour.

Last but not least, applying to transfers: For lack of a better word, I got fucked on my transferrable classes. I brought 26 credits in, and only 6 credits count towards my gen-ed requirements. Keep in mind that the classes that I took WERE all standard gen-ed classes. The University is extremely strict on transferring credits; they claim "academic reputation", but I can't help but think that there are financial motives involved.

I do not know the reputation of UMW. Apparently, it has a good one among the mid-Atlantic region. It better though, because the Gen-Ed requirements of this school are more intimidating then any other school. This is a liberal arts university, and don't expect to cut corners; 2 years of foreign language is required!I hope this helped.