<p>Do any current or past UVA students find competition at the University severe? As per College Powle's "Worst of University of Virginia",students apparently find competition excessive. However, when I visited, everyone seemed so friendly and genuinely nice that I was wondering if this could be true?</p>
<p>Oh! By Competition, I mean academically, not sportswise.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen academic competition. Everyone knows who the superstars in the class are first of all (at least in math… If you have ever seen Good Will Hunting you will know what I mean) and second of all how well you do is directly related to how much you study. Besides psychology, I have never seen a curved class, so it really is a measure of how well you were prepared in high school and how much effort you put in. HTH!</p>
<p>I have never heard anyone refer to any behavior that would point to a cut through environment. </p>
<p>I think our students work hard…so they’re competitive with themselves, if that makes sense.</p>
<p>Dean: Minor typo, I believe you meant “cut throat”.</p>
<p>Actually, on colleg*******, the one thing that students rank low at UVa is the food.</p>
<p>From what I have seen I wouldn’t say students are competitive with each other in that no one is collaborating (when allowed), helping each other out, or friendly.</p>
<p>However, there are definitely times when you feel like you should be studying more for a test/doing more work because everyone else is, if that makes any sense.</p>
<p>Premed classes from what I’m experiencing and pre-comm classes from what I’ve heard can get competitive since you’re competing for spots in med/comm school.</p>
<p>Other classes like the humanities is the opposite, everyone is generally helpful.</p>
<p>Yes, I had a friend who was a Bio major and she said unless she studied hours then she was not going to get an A. It is less “competitive” and more “you need to work very hard to get an A in those classes.” Competitive would be if they only gave out a certain number of As which like I said only psych curves as far as I know, or if people were trying to sabatoge people which they are definitely not (they are just working crazy hard for their As). Or if you consider that competitive then that is good to know. In which case Eschool and Aschool are “competitive” since you have to work very hard and long to attempt to get an A (I would consider that workload and not competitivenss though).</p>
<p>^ In intro bio/orgo labs, only a certain percent DO get an A/B/C. So yes, it is competitive by your definition.</p>
<p>Oh I didn’t know they were curved - bummer</p>
<p>UVA students are competitive with themselves (a bit too much in my opinion), and less with each other. And yes, most people are friendly. Don’t worry, no one will try to sabotage you! AHA!</p>
<p>Perhaps this is true for the intro course labs, but I did not see this when I went to school there. It is nothing like Princeton where they really do limit the As for all classes.</p>