<p>Well, engineering and science are separate schools at UVA, and you have to know when you apply whether you want to do engineering, or env sci / another non-engineering science (ie. you could do chemical engineering or chemistry, and you need to know before you apply that you would rather do engineering but you won’t declare your specific science major or engineering major for a year or so). You’ll either apply to the Engineering School or to the College of Arts and Sciences and transferring between the two is tricky because of the insane engineering school prereqs taken 1st yr (search the forums for more on that).</p>
<p>Now, how good the academics are is a really vague question. Do you mean in terms of:
-graudate school placement
-job placement
-academic intrigue and good professors (as a hs student you proly mean this?)
-courseload</p>
<p>For the first two obviously UVA does pretty well.
The “good professors” qualification is up for debate in any department at any school, but UVA (at least the math department) has a serious problem with foreign professors, as do all research universities (I hear it is a HUGE problem at UPenn, for example). If you’re just looking for a good ugrad education with no emphasis on grad school, you should seriously consider a LAC and not a research university.
The env sci dept ranges from really easy to insanely hard, as I have heard from friends either just taking classes or majoring. Engineering is ridiculously hard, search the forum for more about that.</p>
<p>One thing very cool about UVA sciences is that we have a huge observatory so the astronomy department, while small, is pretty cool - they offer a lot of non-math classes like Life Beyond Earth, etc.</p>
<p>Another thing to keep in mind is that there are a huge number of pre-med people so anyone in Bio/etc will have to deal with them. I have a friend in Curry with me who is then obviously not pre-med but she is a Bio major and I did ask her once about how it affected her major, I think she said she had become used to it and was glad she did not need to worry about getting an A in everything like all of her classmates.</p>
<p>We also have a more liberal artsy environmental science major, ETP (Environmental Thought and Practice), but apparently it is not as rigorous as the regular envi sci major (says a friend who was considering doing it and was urged against it). CVille is pretty green.</p>
<p>You can also design your own major. I knew a pre-med who was majoring in self created “Global Populations and Diseases” or something like that. Basically, Bio and Anthro, and some bioethics.</p>
<p>We also have a (ugrad) neuroscience and cog. sci program here.</p>
<p>I hope that helps you better define what exactly you want to know now. :)</p>