What is the consensus on the pros and cons of UVa Engineering? My kid really likes UVa, even though engineering programs at other colleges he likes less are better ranked. I believe that fit if the school is most important, rather than so-called ranking of program (or college ranking for that matter).
Also, has UVa handled Covid-19 well and are most classes in-person? This is a generalization, but it seems that highly resourced, mid-sized privates may be better positioned to deal with pandemics – including future variants for which the vaccine may not be effective – than large public universities, though at under 20,000 undergrads UVa is much smaller than some other public flagships.
I am on faculty at UVA though not in Engineering so can’t speak specifically to that program. However, some of the students in my school collaborate with engineering students and they seem to be very happy in their respective programs. There are a lot of opportunities for research, and the students seem challenged.
Re: COVID-19, I believe all classes typically held in person (e.g. pre-COVID-19) are being held in person. A small number of faculty have expressed concern over this given they care for older adults or have small (unvaccinated) children at home. But, for the most part, we are THRILLED to be face-to-face with our students!
My daughter is a 4th year in mechanical engineering. She has had a great experience there, even with the pandemic. The engineering school is small within the university, so you get the benefits of a small program with the social/athletic experience of a larger division 1 school. D was able to secure summer research positions with faculty with relatively little effort for the past 2 years. This past summer she was entirely in person in the lab.
Their approach has been to keep case levels manageable. Now, they are only testing symptomatic cases (no surveillance testing). So I would expect that the number of cases reported on the return to grounds dashboard isn’t catching any of the asymptomatic cases. Students are required to be vaccinated and I believe the student vax rate exceeds 95%, but there have been breakthrough cases this year.
Classes are advertised as all in-person though there may be some exceptions for at-risk faculty. My daughter’s classes are all in person and the remote options are gone. So if you do get covid and need to isolate, you can’t just switch to the online version. The school has communicated to the students what they should expect in terms of support from the faculty in the event that they do contract covid. My understanding from those that I know that had to isolate is that the faculty in those cases have been very accommodating.
My sense from the communications that I’ve received from both of my daughters’ schools is that they probably get a lot of external guidance on how to manage the pandemic, so how they respond may be impacted a lot by the regional attitudes and finances. UVA (and other power five schools) has such a huge athletic revenue stream that needed to be preserved, so collectively, I think they had a lot more in the way of resources to come up with a manageable risk level. My other daughter’s mid-sized private college was much more focused on driving case levels to zero. They tested everyone 2x per week and to be honest, I worry about the sustainability ($$) of that approach.