Winter graduation happens in a single day

George Mason fits its whole Winter Graduation into one Thursday in December, in EagleBank Arena on the Fairfax campus. It runs as three ceremonies, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, and every school and college is assigned to one of them.

That assignment matters, because George Mason says graduates may attend only the ceremony for their own school or college. Find your graduate’s college in the table above, and that is your ceremony and your start time. A family whose graduate is in the Costello College of Business or the Scalia Law School, for instance, is coming for the evening ceremony and can plan the day around it.

Each winter ceremony recognizes every graduate individually, doctoral, master’s and bachelor’s alike, so the wait for your graduate’s moment is part of the ceremony, not a separate event.

Tickets come with registration

Every ceremony needs a ticket. A graduate must first have applied to graduate; eligible graduates are then emailed in mid-October with instructions for registering for their ceremony and requesting guest tickets. George Mason has not published how many tickets each graduate can request, so hold off promising seats until your graduate has registered and knows the number.

Security is tight. Every graduate and guest passes through weapons detection, and the arena’s own bag policy and list of prohibited items apply; both are on EagleBank Arena’s website. Graduates also need a Tassel stage pass to check in, which is worth a reminder the night before.

Spring is on the calendar, not yet on the page

The registrar’s spring calendar sets Spring Commencement for the Thursday in the table above, with degrees conferred the next day. George Mason has not yet published where spring graduation will be held, how many ceremonies there will be or at what times. We will add them here when it does. Until then, a cancellable booking around that Thursday is the safe move.

Where to sleep

There are no hotels on campus. The nearest cluster is in the City of Fairfax, along Fairfax Boulevard and Chain Bridge Road, about eight or nine minutes from the arena: the Hampton Inn and the Residence Inn among them. A second group sits around Fair Oaks by I-66, including the SpringHill Suites and the Courtyard, about ten minutes out. Old Town Fairfax, with its restaurants, is five minutes from the arena.

Beyond that is the whole of Northern Virginia and Washington: Tysons about twenty minutes, Alexandria and Reston about twenty-five, and Arlington, Dulles Airport and downtown Washington around half an hour with clear roads. At rush hour, I-66 and the Beltway can double those times, which makes the Fairfax hotels the practical choice for the 9:30 a.m. ceremony.

We grade the pressure as low: three ceremonies in one day, a family at only one of them, and a large suburban hotel market around it. That is our reading of the schedule and the supply, not a measured count of free rooms, which we have not taken for Fairfax.