Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., the university is named in honor of George Mason, a Founding Father of the United States.

[20] Seventeen freshmen students attended classes at University College in a small renovated elementary school building in Bailey's Crossroads starting in September 1957.

The measure, known as H 33,[23] passed the Assembly easily and was approved on March 1, 1966, making George Mason College a degree-granting institution.

During that same year, the local jurisdictions of Fairfax County, Arlington County, and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church agreed to appropriate $3 million to purchase land adjacent to Mason to provide for a 600-acre (240-hectare) Fairfax Campus with the intention that the institution would expand into a regional university of major proportions, including the granting of graduate degrees.

During Merten's tenure, the university hosted the World Congress of Information Technology in 1998,[28] celebrated a second Nobel Memorial Prize-winning faculty member in 2002, and cheered the Men's basketball team in their NCAA Final Four appearance in 2006.

Enrollment increased from just over 24,000 students in 1996 to approximately 33,000 during the spring semester of 2012, making Mason Virginia's largest public university.

In a resolution on August 17, 2012, the board asked Cabrera to create a new strategic vision that would help Mason remain relevant and competitive in the future.

[36] In 2018, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealed that conservative donors, including the Charles Koch Foundation and Federalist Society, were given direct influence over faculty hiring decisions at the university's law and economics schools.

GMU President Ángel Cabrera acknowledged that the revelations raised questions about the university's academic integrity and pledged to prohibit donors from sitting on faculty selection committees in the future.

[39] On February 24, 2020, the Board of Visitors appointed Gregory Washington as the university's eighth president, and he assumed that role on July 1, 2020.

[41] Mild unrest occurred on George Mason's campus in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attack of Hamas on Israel and the resulting war.

[54] The stadiums for indoor and outdoor track and field, baseball, softball, tennis, soccer and lacrosse are also on the Fairfax campus,[55] as is Masonvale, a housing community for faculty, staff and graduate students.

[65] Vernon Smith Hall houses the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the Mercatus Center, and the Institute for Humane Studies.

[70] More than 4,000 students are enrolled in classes in bioinformatics, biotechnology, information technology, and forensic biosciences educational and research programs.

[75] The Mason Center for Team and Organizational Learning stylized as EDGE is an experiential education facility open to the public.

[49] Open to students in August 2012 after breaking ground on the project on June 29, 2011, the primary focus of the campus is global conservation training.

[83] Mason offers undergraduate, graduate master's, law, and doctoral degrees with an emphasis on combining modern practice-based professional education with a comprehensive traditional liberal arts curriculum.

[97] In 2024, the university accepted 90% of its undergraduate applicants, and did not consider high school class rank or require standardized test scores for admission.

[102] Mason moved into this classification based on a review of its 2013–2014 data that was performed by the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University.

[123] Each spring, student organizations at Mason compete to paint one of the 38 benches located on the Quad in front of Fenwick Library.

[125] On the eastern edge of the Fairfax campus lies Masonvale, houses intended for graduate students and visiting faculty.

Closer to the center of the Fairfax campus are the residence halls along Chesapeake Lane, named: Northern Neck, Commonwealth, Blue Ridge, Sandbridge, Piedmont, and Tidewater, as well as Hampton Roads, Dominion, Eastern Shore, and the Commons.

At the Science and Technology (SciTech) campus near Manassas, Virginia, 21 miles (34 km) west of Fairfax, Beacon Hall was designed for graduate student housing.

About 485 student-athletes compete in 22 men's and women's Division I sports – baseball, basketball, cross-country, golf, lacrosse, rowing, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, volleyball, and wrestling.

Full time students of George Mason University, both outside and a part of the School of Theater are allowed to audition for these productions.

8 in the nation for Freedom of Speech and protecting rights enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), FIRE also posits that the majority viewpoint of the student body leans politically liberal in the sense of modern liberalism in the United States,[144][145] although the political ideologies of libertarianism in the United States[146][147][148] and conservatism in the United States[149][150] are also visible on campus with the university stating that it strives for "comprehensive ideological balance," evidence including but not limited to the university being "home to both the Antonin Scalia Law School and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution," named after a conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice (Antonin Scalia) politically appointed by Republican Party U.S. President and a liberal U.S. President (Jimmy Carter) and First Lady (Rosalynn Carter) who are members of the Democratic Party, respectively.

[153] The naming of the Antonin Scalia Law School after the late conservative United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the hiring of conservative United States Supreme Court Justices Bret Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas as professors, the allegedly “lavish treatments,” speaking gigs, and "all-experiences-paid" travel arrangements they received, its close ties with the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, and the extensive provision of professional development and continuing education programs, as well as speaking engagements for sitting judges of lower and appellate divisions - in particular dealing with the topic of law and economics - has brought on controversy on the university itself, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Federal Judiciary of the United States as a whole over the overt conservative political influence taking place at the law school and the university's growing influence over the U.S. judicial system.

In particular, the 2009 hiring of General Michael Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), and of Robert Deitz, former general counsel of the NSA, were controversial due to Hayden's and Deitz's intelligence careers which involved lawful but unpopular use of mass surveillance.

[155] The George Mason University's historical hoaxes were a group of internet hoaxes and a disinformation campaigns created by students as part of a class project for a course on "Lying about the Past" taught by history professor T. Mills Kelly, with the goal of creating an Internet deception that affected news media platforms.

[164] The Title IX process (which investigates sex discrimination) at George Mason University has continued to be subject to controversy.