The reason I spent over an hour filling out this survey was not to get back at Mary Washington; that would be completely pointless and a waste of my time. The reason I did this was to warn you about a school that I would not attend again for anything in the world. Everything about Mary Washington sucks, especially when compared to all the other schools in Virginia, not one of which has the vast amount of issues Mary Wash does.
Though academically we are a tough school, if your diploma doesn't carry any more weight than other schools that are many times easier, what is the point? Most of the courses are more theoretical than applied anyway so you're not even getting better prepared for the job market.
Housing is a pain in the ass to register for, the dorms themselves are old and worn down, and the new ones aren't much better. Either you're going to have hall bathrooms, no AC (most dorms don't), be on the opposite side of campus from the other dorms, or be far away from the academic buildings. And the food that goes along with living on campus is just gross. The "all-you-can-eat" building (Seacobeck), has horridly low quality of most of their food, and is only making food about 6 hours a day, not to mention the fact that if you arrive even at 6:30 most of the food is gone, and what's left is old and worse than before. The other food service (Eagle's Nest) is better, but it's expensive and they only allot you $4 a meal, which gets you a small sandwich, or two slices of pizza and a watered down soda. And if you mention late-night, I will stab you in the jaw (a Dane Cook reference if you don't know).
In addition, there is little school pride on campus, few sporting events that have decent attendance, and the administration couldn't find their ass with two hand and a map. If you have to deal with any administrator at all, prepare for a long battle. They are supremely incompetent, condescending, and no help to any student. Ever. I kid you not, at every turn they do their best to make their students lives harder than they already are.
Now you may think I have over exaggerated about some things and there's nothing I can do about that besides tell you what a waste of almost two hours now, that would have been for me. But at the very least, believe me about this: if you are a student who is sick, disabled, or requires accommodations in any way...DO NOT GO TO THIS SCHOOL!!! If you're healthy, fine; dig your own grave. But if you're sick, not only should you not expect any help in the least from the school and certainly not from disability services, you should expect college to be many times harder for you than high school was. I do not have enough time to mention all the ways they have fought to keep from helping me in the least, even with my parents coming down to speak to multiple Deans and letters from all of my specialists (don't think I'm some paraplegic either, I guarantee I would whoop you in a 1-1 game of basketball), but I will give you a simple example. After all the paper work it takes to get classroom accommodations, the accommodations say that they are in the end up to the teacher to decide if they want to allow them, and the administration will not interfere in the classroom in any way, not even to tell the teacher "Hey this kid really was sick this semester, could you try and help him out?" What's even more ironic is the fact that if you have some lesser handicap like you need help note taking, or you need extra time on exams, they have no problem doing their job and telling the teachers that they need to do this. But God have mercy on you if you get Cancer, or MS, or even Ulcerative Colitis, because they couldn't give help you any fucking less if they tried.
I tried to give you some of the up sides of Mary Wash in the first few areas, but I really don't see that many, which is why it seems so one-sided. I can't keep you from going to Mary Wash, and I wouldn't think less of you if you did, but just keep this one thing in mind: Last year a national survey was taken of almost all colleges and universities in the US. The administration began porrading around the fact it was considered one of the prettiest campus in the country. They put it on their website, brochures and in the alumni maganize. What they didn't mention was the headline of the student run newspaper (the Bullet) regarding another result from the same nation-wide survey: "Mary Washington has the third most depressed students in the county."
Not a sermon, just a thought ;).