George Mason University, where my wife and I graduated, is heading into the final 8 of the NCAA finals.  This has been an amazing run for a school still establishing itself as a national force on all levels.  When I went to Mason 20+ years ago it had just recently transitioned from a small satellite campus for one of the main state universities onto its own.  Through the years it has been making marks and producing some surprises in many fields and is now home to a lot of nationally reknowned names in many fields.

Every discipline in college has a weeding out class where those not really suited for the field find they cannot get past this one topic and head for greener pastures in some other discipline.  In the field of electrical engineering that class is Electromagnetic Field Theory.  All the EE’s I know struggled with that class at Mason, and many had to take it twice.  I was proud to take it once, but I had been a math major for a while and was ahead of the curve there.  My class was still warned they would not pass if they did not get at least one answer 100% correct on a test!

I was stunned to find years later that the same course at the University of Maryland – an education powerhouse in the DC area – taught the same subject in two semesters verses the one semester at upstart Mason.  Needless to say Mason grads tended to be a little sharper in the math than most, we had to be.

My gut tells me Mason is still demanding more from its students than the larger more established schools.  It is probably a safe bet given were GMU finds itself today, taking on this years expected champions.  So the concept of higher expectations achieving higher results has probably been proven once again.  The only question is, how high will it go?
Go Patriots!  You have already won in my eyes.