<p>ps- I myself attended both Mason and UVa. I went to Mason part time for 2 years before transferring to UVa to finish my engineering degree. Although Mason in particular has probably changed a lot since I was there, I recommend that you stay at UVa if you can. First, I believe you would see some fall-off in quality in many of the classes at Mason. There are good students and professors at Mason but in any given class you may expect a few people with deficient backgrounds or who for whatever reason don’t function that well in the class, and that can slow things down. However the most frustrating thing about being a commuter student at a commuter school is the difficulty of getting together with other students to work on projects or other kinds of group assignments, or getting help with something when you need it.</p>