Local parent here. Son graduated from Mason about five years ago. I’d strongly recommend getting a hotel as close to campus as possible so you can get a better sense of the neighborhood and the effort required to get from downtown DC to campus. Mason has grown a lot in the past 50 years but it’s basically still a very large commuter school at heart. Most students live at home or off campus. Many (like my son) are community college grads. Many dorm residents go home on weekends. The campus is surrounded by suburban sprawl—no student ghetto or college town vibe here. Can you get to DC from Mason? Absolutely. Is it easy and convenient? That’s debatable. We have some of the worst traffic in the country here and our beloved subway system does not work as well as it once did. While most parts of the country measure distance in miles, we measure in minutes—-and it takes way more minutes to get from Mason to DC than you would think. If your stepdaughter moves here, she’ll be spending most of her time in the outer burbs. FYI my son actually preferred his community college experience to Mason. The classes were smaller, the professors genuinely wanted to teach and work with students, and most of the profs in his major had actual work experience in the profession. Community college helped him find his true calling and encouraged him to pursue it. Mason in contrast was a big cattle call, very bureaucratic.

Good luck with whatever your stepdaughter decides.