<p>wow very impressive globalist..its very reassuring since im going to UVA but even if I were debating the other side...I'd be speechless!</p>
<p>i don't think liveitout was saying they aren't peer institutions. i think he/she was just saying that penn has an edge over uva as an overall institution.</p>
<p>everyone needs to chill out</p>
<p>actually, liveitout said</p>
<p>"uva and penn are hardly peer schools"</p>
<p>which to me is the same as "uva and penn are not peer schools"</p>
<p>No, liveitout did try to say that Upenn was not a peer institution. That's specifically mentioned by preceding a detailed response of why UPenn is allegedly better than UVA with "alright, on the claim of penn being a peer school to uva- ..."</p>
<p>Very few people need to actually chill out, as most are making collected statements such as Globalist's great post. Trying to act the mediator will not really help either side.</p>
<p>Edit: Yep, it seems we have several instances of attempting to claim they are not peer schools now.</p>
<p>oh well i didn't read it that closely</p>
<p>you people don't need to be d!cks about this. this thead was here to help a kid decide on his own personal future, not argue for our own egos.</p>
<p>how are we arguing for our own egos?</p>
<p>my original point was he should go check out the schools and see which one he liked most. all 3 schools are comparable academicly and he should just pick the one he likes most. then people started saying that uva was worse than penn specificly and i thought i should defend it. excuse me.</p>
<p>you're excused haha </p>
<p>there's no need for anyone to get fired up here. i bet the OP doesn't even read this thread anymore.</p>
<p>globalist - you have some great points. i may have come off angry and argumentative, but i'm honestly not. i have a lot of respect for uva. i just thought people were being incredibly defensive without reason when dearkonstantine made a simple statement about penn being an ivy and ranked 4th. if you don't believe rankings are legitimate, that's fine. but many people do... so the OP should have as much information as possible when making a decision. i'm just sharing all the information i can find. and not all of it was from us news at all, much of it wasn't.</p>
<p>also, i don't see what your point is about uva "holistically" evaluating applicants. so does penn - that's why so many people with 1600 sats and 4.0 gpas get rejected. i know several people admitted to penn with sat totals under 2000 and class ranks FAR from valedictorian. just like uva, penn is building a class.</p>
<p>anyway, you can say rankings are pretty meaningless, but you can't say all numbers are. penn has better financial resources - i understand it's because uva is a public school, but it's still an important thing to consider. and penn has a larger budget than uva too. uva is a better value - i agree, that's VERY IMPORTANT to many applicants, and it may be to the OP. that's up to him/her to decide. </p>
<p>i don't think my point came across very well. in the eyes of the academic community and much of the american public (the ones who know what either school is, that is), penn is more highly-regarded. i know that's just perception and it's most likely meaningless. but perception can make a big difference in someone's college experience... or even their future opportunities. it's always something to consider. as are the numbers i offered.</p>
<p>dearkonstantine -</p>
<p>you'll find that happens to most posts on cc. atleast it keeps things interesting.</p>
<p>all these ppl backin up UVA just shows how HUGE they love the school. Like seriously speaking, im not only saying this cuz UVA was my first choice. I've never really seen a school that has sooooo much love from its student body. Like UVA kids are seriously like "yea welcome to cville b!tch".</p>
<p>haha touche i love uva too guys</p>
<p>What about Duke? haha</p>
<p>and the miserable students who go there? i'd rather go to joe blow university than that **** show.</p>
<p>Duke sits comfortably as the second best school in north carolina. Will it ever be able to catch NCSU? I doubt it.</p>
<p>F#ck Duke that's what about duke</p>
<p>LiveItOut,</p>
<p>I dont buy the perception argument. Yes, perception may color someones experience, but perception is not always reality.</p>
<p>For example, many perceive UVa to be very conservative, but in reality its quite moderate. </p>
<p>I recently perused through the US News Graduate Rankings booklet the other day, and I noticed that UVAs Politics department wasnt ranked. (Personally, Im really shocked by that because I know UVAs program is really great. This just further indicates how flawed U.S. News rankings can be.) Whatever the case, some may perceive that UVa isnt a good school for a person with political aspirations, but all these current & former politicians attended The University of Virginia either as grads or undergrads, studying politics or something totally different:</p>
<p>George F. Allen: U.S. senator & governor of Virginia
Hanan Ashrawi: Palestinian spokeswoman, peace activist
Gerald L. Baliles: governor of Virginia
Allen Barkley: U.S. vice president (under Truman)
B. Evan Bayh: U.S. senator & governor of Indiana
Fernando Bolívar: Venezuelan diplomat; UVas first Hispanic student; son of Simón Bolívar, Liberator of South America
Christopher S. Bond: U.S. senator of Missouri
Frederick C. Boucher 71: U.S. congressman of Virginia
L. Lyons Brown, Jr.: U.S ambassador to Austria
John Campbell: U.S. ambassador to Nigeria
John Cornyn: U.S. senator of Texas
Thomas M. Davis III: U.S. congressman of Virginia
Edward E. Elson: U.S. ambassador to Denmark
William S. Farish III: U.S. ambassador to Great Britain
Gene E. Franchini: chief justice, New Mexico Supreme Court
James Gilmore: governor of Virginia
John Gleeson: New York prosecutor in the John Gotti trial
Virgil H. Goode, Jr.: U.S. congressman of Virginia
Michael Guest: U.S. ambassador to Romania
Leroy Hassell: first black chief justice, Virginia Supreme Court
James Heiple: chief justice, Illinois Supreme Court
Jeannie Hong: first Korean U.S. judge
W. Nathaniel Howell: U.S. ambassador to Kuwait (during the first Gulf War)
Brereton C. Jones: governor of Kentucky
Alton G. Keel: U.S. ambassador to NATO
Edward M. Kennedy: U.S. senator of Massachusetts
Robert F. Kennedy: U.S. senator of New York; U.S. attorney general
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: environmental activist
Angus S. King: governor of Maine
Sheila Jackson Lee: U.S. congresswomen of Texas
Thurgood Marshall, Jr.1: cabinet secretary for Bill Clintons Presidential Cabinet
Janet Napolitano: governor of Arizona
Bill Nelson: U.S. congressman of Georgia, space shuttle astronaut
Frederick E. Nolting, Jr.: U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam
Lewis F. Payne: U.S. congressman of Virginia
W. Robert Pearson: U.S. ambassador to Turkey
Charles S. Robb: U.S. senator & governor of Virginia
Marshall C. Sanford: governor & U.S. congressman of South Carolina
John W. Snow: U.S. Treasury Secretary
Javier Solanas: secretary-general, NATO
John C. Stennis: U.S. senator of Mississippi
John Charles Thomas: first black justice, Virginia Supreme Court
John V. Tunney: U.S. senator of California
John W. Warner III: U.S. senator of Virginia
Daniel Wathen: chief justice, Maine Supreme Court
Lowell Weiker: governor & U.S. senator of Connecticut
Ashley Wills: U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka
Woodrow Wilson : U.S. president; founder, League of Nations; Nobel Peace laureate</p>
<p>Though I volunteered at UVa Admissions while in college, I cant speak to why they admit or reject each candidate. I do know that UVa hopes to be a transformative experience for its students, and a big key to that transformation is student self-goverance. (Like I said in my previous post, UVa looks beyond your GPA and SAT to find stand-out traits like "self-goverance".) Its not a principle thats taught by the professors - instead its a principle that permeates throughout the Universitys environment. Its my belief that self-governance is the key to success for UVAs alums. For example, UVa doesnt have a film school and only a couple of years ago was a Media Studies Program created, but yet all these films/TV shows were written, produced, and/or directed by a UVa grad:</p>
<p>Batman
Batman Returns
A Few Good Men
Mean Girls
When Harry Met Sally
The Chronicles of Narnia
Master & Commander
Misery
The Princess Bride
The Sure Thing
Stand By Me
Patch Adams
Liar Liar
Rain Man
Diner
Good Morning, Vietnam
Galaxy Quest
The Nutty Professor
Ace Ventura Pet Detective
Dead Poets Society
Three Kings
The Golden Girls
Empty Nest
Benson
The Partridge Family
Whats My Line?
Beat the Clock
To Tell the Truth
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
The Dirty Dozen
The Longest Yard
Escape from Alcatraz</p>
<p>Furthermore Stanley Winson, the special effects creator for movies like Aliens, Edward Scissorhands, Terminator, Terminator 2, Inspector Gadget, Sixth Sense, Mouse Hunt, Jurassic Park, Predator, and Predator 2 graduated from UVa.</p>
<p>UVa doesnt have a journalism school, but yet Fred Barnes, Brit Hume, Bob Sellers, and Wyatt Andrews at Fox News went to UVa. So did Laura Ingraham at MSNBC, and Katie Couric. </p>
<p>Due to the isolated racial incidents last year, some may perceive UVa to be a bad place for minorities, but yet, the number of minority applicants went up this year, and UVa continues to have the highest graduation rate of African-Americans among all public schools as well as most private schools including schools like Duke. UVAs rate is even higher than all historically black colleges including the stellar ones like Howard, Spelman, and Morehouse. Though Im not black, I was invited to attend an admissions event last week hosted by black alumni here in NY, where they invited accepted black high school students to brunch and spoke to them about why they LOVED UVa. This not only speaks to the strong community that African-American students have created for themselves at the University; it also speaks to the power of UVAs emphasis on Jeffersonian self-goverance where we as students and alumni know our success is the product of our own doing. When you believe in self-goverance, then you know there are no excuses, and the black community at UVa espouses this attitude as well. By the way, the average black graduation in the country is around 40%. At UVa, its 86%.</p>
<p>Speaking of graduation rates, public schools are known for having lower graduation rates than private schools, but UVa has the highest graduation rate among all public schools and higher than most private schools. According to U.S. News rankings, the magazine predicts UVa to have a lower graduation rate of 85% based on the schools student aptitude stats, but the University over-performs by 7 points for an actual rate of 92%. </p>
<p>To me the proof is in the pudding. A winner is not someone how plays a good hand, because anyone can win with a good hand. A true winner is someone who plays a bad hand well. Though The University of Virginia may admit students with lesser stats than Duke and U.Penn, UVa still produces just as many leaders and other successful alumni as the best of the private schools. That to me is a sign of a truly great transformative university. </p>
<p>So, which is more important? The perception of UVa or its reality?</p>
<p>Thanks, Globalist, for another "printable" post.</p>
<p>Thank you for the info. I KNEW I had made the right decision in choosing UVa over an Ivy!!! Looking forward to Fall 2006!</p>
<p>We do have a ton of famous alumni. Granted, many of the most prestigious alums actually only studied at the Law School which is undoubtedly more prestigious than our undergrad school. (ie. Woodrow Wilson was Princeton ugrad, UVA Law and I think most of the Kennedy's were Harvard ugrad and UVA Law). Just pointing out that distinction since this is a forum for undergrads..</p>
<p>MrOrange, I wasn't saying that Duke or UPenn don't have great alums. I was saying that UVa has just as many great alums. </p>
<p>I think you missed the point. My point was about the power of self-goverance which permeates throughout UVa. No matter what you study as a grad student or undergrad or Law student or whatever, it's because of self-governance that compels UVa students and alums to succeed (which I refer to in my previous post when I touched on the politicians that attended UVa who as I said studied "politics or something totally different"). It's because of Virginia students' self-governance and self-motivation that causes us to succeed even in fields where UVa doesn't even teach (i.e. television, film & journalism).</p>