A ceremony for each stage, over several days

Georgia State spreads its fall commencement across several days and two buildings. Doctoral graduates are hooded first, at the Rialto Center for the Arts, the university’s theatre in downtown Atlanta. The rest follows at the Georgia State Convocation Center: one ceremony for graduate degrees, then three undergraduate ceremonies grouped by college, one in the afternoon and two the following day. The exact days, times and colleges are in the table above.

Every graduate is recognized on stage individually. Georgia State holds all of this indoors on purpose: the Convocation Center was built for events like commencement, and an indoor venue lets the university fix the schedule early and ignore the weather.

Tickets depend on the RSVPs

Guests need tickets for every Convocation Center ceremony. The number is not fixed in advance: Georgia State expects to give each graduate between five and seven, and confirms the figure only after the RSVP deadline, because it depends on how many graduates say they will attend. For the fall round it also set a date for releasing additional tickets, shown with the graduate ceremony in the table, and if extra tickets become available it runs a waiting list. So the most useful thing a graduate can do is RSVP on time, and the most useful thing a family can do is plan on five until the number is confirmed.

Children under three who can sit on a lap need no ticket. The Ph.D. hooding at the Rialto works differently: the theatre is small, so each candidate may bring four guests, and seating there is first come, first served.

Getting there

The Convocation Center is on Capitol Avenue in Summerhill, a little over a mile south of the Five Points heart of downtown and the main campus. From the downtown hotels it is a two- to four-minute drive with clear roads; Atlanta’s traffic at rush hour is another matter, so leave extra time for a 10 a.m. ceremony. The Rialto, by contrast, is in the middle of downtown, within walking distance of most of the hotels below.

Where to sleep

Downtown Atlanta is the natural base for both venues. The Fairfield Inn & Suites on Peachtree Street, with 156 suites, is about two minutes from the Convocation Center by road. The Residence Inn, a little further up Peachtree, and the Courtyard on Carnegie Way are around four minutes away, as is the Home2 Suites on Walton Street, and all of them are close to the Rialto. Centennial Olympic Park and its larger hotels are four minutes away, Midtown seven, and the airport about twenty.

We grade the pressure as low. Each family attends one ceremony, the round is spread over several days, and downtown Atlanta has thousands of rooms within a mile. That is our judgement from the schedule and the supply, not a measured count of free rooms, which we have not taken for Atlanta.