The University of Virginia

Date: Apr 15 2004
Major: Aerospace Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
There are several things most people should know about Uva.

1. Student attitudes: Uva has a reputation for being full of arrogant and unfriendly people. I think this is completely false, and I have never heard any specific examples of people experiencing unfriendliness or arrogance. I can give you tons of specific times people have been friendly and helpful to me, but I can't name one sour experience I've had with an arrogant person.

2. Social Life: The social life is great. You can do what you want to do. You can hole up and study all the time, or you can go to frats every night, or house parties, or bars (those last three go in a general order: as you get farther through school, you will move from frats, to house parties, to bars.)

3. Campus issues: Very beautiful campus and surrounding area. Lots of parks and nice places to visit. Overall a very safe campus. Only glaring campus safety issue is a serial rapist, who has been around probably for five years give or take a few years, and surfaces maybe once or twice a year. Not a huge deal, but worth mentioning. Other than that, no major problems.

4. Academics: I would say UVA is very rigorous academically, though it is not as noted for it as some schools, for example william and mary and other smaller schools, because those schools generally sacrifice social life so that anyone looking at their school has got to focus on class difficulty. I find that engineering and most pre-med majors are very difficult. I never expected to see so many people come in expecting to major in Biology and be a doctor, then take Biol 300 and Organic Chemistry, and about go into shock at realizing that they aren't going to be a doctor. I feel that non-science and engineering majors are easier, but still rigorous and on par with our ranking.

Overall: I feel a balance of social life and academics is important. College may be the greatest learning opportunity of our lives, but it is also the single greatest social experience you will ever be a part of. I say, live a little. If you don't go out and drink irresponsibly now, blow off studying for at least one test when it snows on the day of the lighting of the lawn, streak the lawn, etc. when are you going to? Academics are the foremost reason you are here, and you need to put your priorities in meeting your grade goals above your social needs, but don't drown out the wonderful social life available to you.