For lurkers, I thought I'd post my results :

this technique works for public properties and works well.

Here's the VB version of what I did

We are asssuming there are a dozen public properties of type BaseBO
Based on a string we are going to find out the number of records in that BO
(the actually string is derived from evaluating the displayvalue of an enum at run-time)

Dim childname as string = "GL"
Dim childbo as Basebo 
Dim pd As PropertyDescriptor = _
TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(Me).Find(childname, True)

         If Not IsDBNull(pd) Then
                  childbo = CType(pd.GetValue(Me), BaseBO)
                  childcount = childbo.Count
          End If

Thanks Cetin

(the function Michel posted is very useful when the BO is assigned to a private variable instead of a property )

>>I have a number of properties which are objects ( business objects )
>>
>>If I have string which is the same as the name of one of those properties I would like to find the value of a property of the corresponding object.
>>
>>in VFP
>>

>>*property is called _Propmaster
>>
>>varstr = "Propmaster"
>>prop = "_"+varstr+".count"
>>
>>mycount = eval(prop)
>>

>>
>>Looking for a technique that will accomplish the same thing in .NET
>>
>>vb or C#
>>
>>TIA
>
>There are many ways to do things in .Net just like VFP:) One way would be to use TypeDescriptor class. ie:
>
>

PropertyDescriptor pd = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties( myObj ).Find( myProperty, true );
>if (pd != null)
>   var value = pd.GetValue( myObj );

>
>Cetin