AdagioM - that's a bummer! Hope she is ok now.

Jack - this is actually rather fun. I sort of think I missed my calling - I should be a guidance counselor, LOL.

Mik - I'm not even sure what free speech rankings mean in this context - does that means that the campus is left wing but open to right wing speakers? Because just glancing at it, they look like pretty liberal schools. And while I am in favor of free speech in general, I have to admit that I'd definitely get behind a college where the students protested the crap out of someone like Alex Jones coming to speak vs. welcoming him with open arms and giving him a stage from which to spew his nonsense. So I'm not sure what quite to make of this ranking.

I went to GW. A long time ago. Things may have changed. But it does seem that it would hit many of your wants. It is so in the city that if you didn’t notice the signs and all the college-age people, you wouldn’t realize you are driving through a university. Definitely no wall around it setting it off from its surroundings. At least when I was there, it had a decent comp sci program, (of course) a stellar poli sci program, and a variety of pretty much anything else you’d want to take. I guess the law school and the med school are pretty well-respected.

DC universities have (or had) a consortium including GW, Georgetown, American, Trinity, and Gallaudet wherein any student at one could take classes at any other. I recall one deaf woman who was in several of my sociology classes. I took notes for her periodically and helped her read other students' notes because I knew a bit of sign language.

But, my summary opinion was that it was a second-rate education at first-rate prices. Tuition doubled in the time I was there, and the guy who assumed the presidency about the time I left wanted the place to be known as Harvard on the Potomac a d the way to do that was to raise prices. I heard him on the radio years later and he was boasting that GW had the highest tuition in the country... but that's not a problem because no one actually pays rack rate, everyone gets some sort of financial assistance. I was screaming at the radio "I paid full price!" The whole thing was absurd. Since GW is in the city, a lot of students were adults either returning to school, finishing a degree, or taking practical classes like computer programming. This was good in that it added some diversity and real-world perspective to the student population. On the other hand, a lot of the teachers were also from the real world and had good, relevant experience, but little in the way of teaching skills. My FORTRAN instructor was a programmer for the Social Security Administration. My biology-for-non-science-majors and chemistry-for-non-science-majors instructor was a gynecologist with an office in Arlington (he was a great teacher because he had been teaching these classes for 20 years). Many of my other instructors were grad students, again, with decent knowledge, but again, with zero teaching skills. I ended up teaching the Pascal class -- an hour after the scheduled class, down in the computer lab, when a bunch of the other students cornered me to explain what the heck the instructor was trying to say.

So at least for undergrad classes, at least half the instructors were not actual professors. I have no idea if this is the same elsewhere. But I found it a drag.

So... I'd look at GW. Brace yourself for the pricetag. The location is great. White House is a couple blocks to the east. The Watergate is a couple blocks to the west. I used to do my grocery shopping at the Safeway in the basement of the Watergate. It's not a far drive from home. My brother was doing post-doc at Princeton and I'd drive up there or he'd drive to DC a couple times a year. And if LL#2 moves off-campus, getting to GWU is easy: there's a Metro station on the edge of campus.

My recollection is that it was an accepting environment for people who didn't fit in in some way or another. Or maybe that was just what my friend group was like. I think someone like LL#2 could thrive there. Again, that's how it was 35 years ago. No idea what it's like today.


By the way, George Mason is known for having a much more conservative bent. That would scare me off.

My uncle was a professor at UMCP. He said the problem is that the campus is HUGE and if you don't have an hour to get from one class to the next (unless they are in the same building), you will chronically be late.

How about Towson?