<p>Given that Pennsylvania has some pretty good state schools and some pretty fantastic private liberal arts school I am surprised that you are wasting more than a few minutes on your UVA application. It is a research university and the quallity of an undergrad education at UVA varies widely depending on major/luck/attitude of student. What are your long term goals? Grad school? UVA does not have as good a record for placement in med, vet or law school as a number of small liberal arts schools in pennsylvania and much, much poorer outcomes for students who eventually seek a PhD. I live in NoVa and, while I recognize that UVA is a good school, it is a little overhyped by the OOS who have seen too many ranking studies. I don’t see the average UVA graduate (and I see a lot of them) better educated or better employed than the graduates from VaTech and, gasp!, Virginia Commonwealth. A top-notch student from either of these schools (or from UPitt, Washington and Jefferson college, etc) elicits as much interest as a good student from UVA and sometimes more because the Tech and VCU students often have taken an unusual path (work/school or military and then school), which generally means they make better employees than pampered product of a suburban HS to UVA with no stops for real life graduate. Don’t go into debt or through lots of angst to get an education in VA that you can get cheaper in your own state.</p>