<p>listen screw stereotypes I don't drink and never have I been pressured to.......there is great truth to the pretense at UVA but 1) you gotta love it 2) come to UVA or you are a dumbass</p>
<p>If anyone tries to deny stereotypes and conformity here, they are lying.....UVa is UVa and that's how it's gonna be</p>
<p>stay away from the preppy snobs (50% of the preps) and stay with the preppy nice-kinds (the other 50% of the preps) trust me all preps are hot.....if you are a girl and you fall for a preppy frat snob boy it is your own damn fault 'cause there are just as many preppy nice-kinds guys that look like they should be on the cover of GQ (like me.....yes, this is me griping, but you want the truth I'll give it to you from the ultra-unbiased perspective: I am from Arizona).</p>
<p>It is really that simple........no one turns down UVA without feeling like a complete idiot two months down the line</p>
<p>You wont feel like an idiot for turning down UVA for W&M, trust me. UVa has a sports prgram and party scene that is bigger and louder than W&M. W&M has a smaller, residential campus and faculty that are not distracted by research pressures. Less conformityand pretentiousness at W&M.</p>
<p>Both are great schools. Go visit both and follow your heart and not the crowd.</p>
<p>Many excellent students have turned down both UVA and W&M and choose to go elsewhere -for whatever reasons - and are doing well and don't regret their decision. You need to do what is in your best interests. It's a very personal decision. Good luck.</p>
there is great truth to the pretense at UVA but 1) you gotta love it 2) come to UVA or you are a dumbass
</p>
<p><em>sarcasm</em> You are really doing a great job of painting a positive picture of the student body at UVA. <em>sarcasm</em></p>
<p>Anyways, I visited UVA this week and wasn't blown away like I was hoping I'd be. I think I may have been expecting tooooo much from the campus. Or maybe it's just not a fit for me? I don't know because I went with a friend and his mom kept saying "Oh my god, the campus is so beautiful." I was just like "umm... it's nice." She kept saying that I was giving off a vibe that I didn't like the campus, she was right but I didn't feel like admitting to it.</p>
<p>I still need to visit William and Mary... and I may have to visit UVA again with more realistic expectations. I also really wish I had gone inside the rotunda and seen the second floor. I only saw all the buildings from the outside.</p>
<p>My daughter is going through the exact some thoughts. She's visiting UVA Friday for Day on the Lawn...then we travel to W&M for admitted students day on Saturday. Hopefully she'll know the proper fit. Good luck.</p>
<p>After your visit to UVA, please provide us with your considered opinion on the campus,residence halls, overall ambience, and more imprtant, how do you find the diversity in the student body? Would you like to recommend UVA for a student coming from a middle income family? </p>
<p>I am aware, one visit may not be adequate to appreciate all the points I mentioned above. Please provide your point of view as a parent.</p>
<p>I will, rintu....and it's not just one campus visit. Both step sons are UVA graduates and even back in the day, UVA was a regular party stop on road trips!</p>
<p>"you want the truth I'll give it to you from the ultra-unbiased perspective: I am from Arizona"</p>
<p>Perhaps I did not elaborate enough. I am from California, New Jersey, Rhode Island/Massachusetts/Connecticut, Arizona, and now Texas (my family is moving for the 5th time, as I write to you). I have the true look at many states and regional cultures in the U.S., I understand the pretense/nature/beauty and riches of the Northeast (which you will love if you are part of it), the new-style beach life of CA (which you will love for about 2 months), the terribleness and scorching weather of AZ (which you will love for about 2 days), the extremely-smart-yet-grungy-in-some-areas of NJ (which you may or may not ever love), and now the overall amazingness of VA (which you can't help but love eternally). Take my comments seriously, as I have a strong heart-felt love for UVa, as do nearly all do at this beautiful university. I can at least give you one of the best perspectives you will get when thinking about colleges in U.S. If you critically look at how UVa fairs against other colleges overall, plus the added incentive of tradition, it becomes clear that UVa is the best bet, period. I know USouthernCal, ASU, URI, Brown, Dartmouth, etc. If you are a normal person (aka not some hate-all-pretense emo or recluse) you will love UVa. To not be "blown away" by UVa at first glance means you have high expectations, which is good, but I assure anyone that once you come here, you will see that there is only one University, and that's UVa. If UVa is such a big university where no one cares about you, then none of my professors would know me, nor any students. Yet I walk down University Ave or McCormick Rd and can't go for more than 10 seconds without seeing someone I am close friends with (# of close friends can hit very high, so you can see how much wahoos care about each other). Half my professors are on a first-name basis with me. I feel like I know too many students at this school.</p>
<p>If the above paragraphs seem like they are written from the heart, it's because they are. I love UVa and always will, that is the mark that this school will leave on you. I am only in my second semester, but I already have a sense of belonging at this school. Maybe it's the fact that I am listening to emotional Three Doors Down songs as I am typing, or maybe it is because I have a lot of bottled up feelings that I am trying to release right now in the form of a message, but none the less my words here hold true and lasting. One of the great feelings is becoming part of a common ideal, and here at Mr. Jefferson's University we have honor. It is an honor to be a Wahoo. Can you accept that honor? It is your choice.</p>
<p>lol this is funny. A girl friend of mine got a full ride to W&M and I got waitlisted while she got waitlisted to UVA and I got in. Not that I ever wanted to go to W&M anyway but everybody seemed confused at W&M's decision regarding me. In fact, only 1/7 guys that I know of got into W&M while 7/10 girls got in. O_o</p>
<p>AZboy: That's a very sincere tribute to UVA. Certainly, there are students out there who feel also feel strongly about their chosen college. Students usually love the school they've decided to attend because they've worked hard to get there. For others, sometimes there's disappointment because of certain expectations that they've had. Glad UVA has worked out for you.</p>
<p>Some one posted on somewhere on this Website about UVA. The person has several sons and daughters at different colleges (Cornell was one). He noticed that his son/daughter and his/her friends who attend UVA had a much stronger tie/love for UVA then their siblings who went somewhere else. He could not explain it but just simply said that there is something about UVA that makes folks who went there love the place.</p>
<p>As an alumnus whose D will soon attend UVA, I can tell you that once you set foot on the Grounds, your heart will never leave the place, even 30 years from now. My friends I know from schools way back when tell me the same thing. Perhaps because we all had the best 4 years of your life there.</p>
<p>Let me say that upon my D's first visit to UVA in the fall, she liked the grounds but she was still very much open to other schools...however, once she went for an overnight stay (official visit) with one of the teams (during which time you are allowed to sit in on a class, stay in a dorm, stay in upper class housing off campus, attend a practice, etc) she was hooked. She got in the car and said "this is it". It was the atmosphere, camaraderie of the team girls, coaches, and everything in between...no other school she visited compared (her words) (Dartmouth, Bucknell, Clemson). Yes, she even liked it better than Dartmouth that was (for her) too far from home, too small, and much more expensive.</p>
<p>Nothing is better than when the school and the person are a perfect match. Nothing is worse than when they are a terrible fit. The effort on these threads should be to help families in the "matching" process and not on which school has higher ranking or "better" dept. the top 50 LAC and Natl U's use basically the same textbooks and same classes. A student will have access to the same education but that is not a guarantee that they will thrive. The difference are in the subtleties but the devil is in these details.</p>
<p>Lets try to focus on depth and not the superficial. Good luck to all the families trying to make these decisions over the coming weeks and I hope the CC community will be an asset and not a distraction.</p>
<p>if nothing else, Jefferson went to W&M, so "Without W&M, UVA wouldn't exist", as some say (not my words). I can differ somewhat, but that's one thing both of our schools have in common, Jefferson.</p>
<p>Thank you irishblues, LBP, and crazyadad. For all those reading these posts and in the process of deciding, you have first-hand accounts from us. Feel free to send questions my way...</p>
<p>you will find a fair number of people at W&M who didn't get accepted to UVA, and a fair number at UVA that didn't get accepted to W&M, which is pretty surprising considering the very similar academic profiles. You will also find a bunch that got accepted to both. Obviously, tons of people from Virginia apply to both of these schools.</p>
<p>and to whoever said UVA didn't "feel" right to them when they went to campus (... grounds), I got that feelings too when I went Junior year of high school. When I went to W&M, it just felt perfect to me. Different schools for different people. Nothing wrong with that at all.</p>
<p>It is interesting how the kids decide what "fits." S was accepted to both UVA and W&M, and had even received a "likely letter" from UVA, but when the admission results came, he was accepted into Monroe at W&M, but not Echols at UVA. He had been excited about UVA after the likely letter, but decided after the Monroe/Echols difference that W&M valued whatever he had to offer more, and was therefore a better fit.</p>