Does anyone know how competitive the engineering school is compared to average for UVa? I tried to look for specific school statistics, but there really are not any.
They give some information http://avillage.web.virginia.edu/iaas/instreports/studat/dd/adm_first.htm
But the basic problem is that the applicant pools cannot be assumed to be interchangeable. You cannot say that it is “easier” or “harder” to get in to engineering just because they have a higher or lower admission rate, unless you can also demonstrate that the applicants are comparable from one college to another - that engineering applicants are the same as architecture (or whatever college) applicants.