Is JMU a suitcase college?

Colleges and Universities A-Z James Madison University
1

With 80% being from in-state, are they likely to go home on the weekends?

2

I don’t know.

But look at some facts about JMU.

  1. Total undergrad enrollment = 20,000 (20% out of state)
  2. 98% of freshman live in campus housing.
  3. 31% of all students live on campus.
  4. When you subtract freshman living on campus, that leaves only about 15% of all students living on campus after freshman year.

Here would be my conclusions just from those numbers.

  1. 20,000 means that JMU is a big school.
  2. 4000 out of staters are guaranteed not to be going home every weekend. That’s the total enrollment of some colleges.
  3. The culture of residential life at this university has to be different than a university at which most students live on campus.
  4. Living off campus for 3 years means that a student chooses with whom s/he lives. S/he can choose to live with roommates who don’t go home.

Since this is your concern, I recommend that you visit Harrisonburg with the specific intent of investigating what student life is like with 85% of non-freshmen living off campus. Admissions should be able to connect you with student representatives who can give you some insight into this way of living for 3 years.

All freshmen with few exceptions are required to live on campus. It would be interesting to find out who can live on campus after freshman year since it is such a small number.

It strikes me that whether JMU is a suitcase college is less important than the question of what the off campus dynamic is like for a student’s final 3 years.

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3

Virginia is a big state. Depending on where students live, it could take 4-5+ hours to get home from Harrisonburg (more with traffic, which coming and going from NOVA, can be intense). It seems unlikely that your average college student wants to spend that kind of time commuting home for the weekend.

My daughter goes to another university in Virginia. One of her roommates is from the city that the university is in. She rarely goes home and even stayed in their apartment over Christmas break. We live 3 hours from the university (in a neighboring state) and my daughter comes home for major holidays only (she has a car and it’s an easy drive). I think it depends on the student - but it would definitely be something to ask at a visit and then again when choosing a potential roommate. If worried, you could always target a roommate from a state that is a flight away.

Many large universities have limited on campus space for upper class students, so it’s not uncommon to have to move off campus after freshman year. If staying on campus is important, ask what the options are (being an RA or joining on on-campus LLC), or look at much smaller colleges, which often have more on-campus living options after freshman year (some even require it for the whole four years).

ETA: Sorry Bill - didn’t mean to reply to you :wink:

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4

I would say no. My son is an in-state student there, and only comes home during breaks even though he has his own car there. We are ~3 hours away. I would say most of the in-state students are from NOVA and that is roughly 2:00 away. With 20,000 students I’m sure a few go home a lot, but in general no.

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5

I don’t think it’s a commuter school. Kids from my area in the northeast attend and recommend it. The freshman retention rate hovers around 90%, which means that kids are generally happy so they return for their sophomore year. Typically, a suitcase school doesn’t have such a high rate.

Explore N*iche and social media for those schools to see what students have to say.

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6

“off-campus” includes housing that is purpose-built for college students, much of it so contiguous with the campus that it doesn’t even feel like “off-campus” and in some cases can be a shorter walk to your classroom than an “on-campus” dorm!

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7

Based on these figures, 8.7% of students live in campus residence halls after their first year (assuming an even distribution of first-year, sophomore, junior and senior students).

8

I am a proud JMU grad. This CERTAINLY was NOT the case in the 90s. It was nice knowing I COULD go home (2+ hours) but I rarely did. JMU is an AWESOME school. Go Dukes!

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9

JMU does not have the reputation of a “suitcase college”. Of the kids I know who went to JMU from my kids northern virginia high school… none of them come home on the weekends. Most only come home for Christmas.

10

I teach at JMU, and would not say it is a suitcase school.

While some students go home on an occasional weekend, most seem to stay in town. When they do go home it is not unusual for my advisees to mention bringing a friend with them.

As others have mentioned VA is a big state and depending on where a student is from it may be a 4-5 hour drive.

After first year it seems like approximately 50% the sophomores live on campus, with smaller percentages of juniors and seniors doing so.

Students living off campus tend to live in (1) single family houses (that are zoned to rent to groups of non-related individuals) north and west of campus, (2) apartments that rent to mix of students and non-students many close to/in the downtown area, or (3) apartment complexes that primarily/exclusively rent to students south and east of campus.

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