<p>hello all-
i’m very interested in applying to UVA and recently found out that they have dropped the ED program beginning with the class of '08 (my class). i am planning to go on the premed track and was looking to apply to top public schools, namely UVA, but wasn’t very familiar with UVA’s strengths. so please help me out by answering the following questions, especially current UVA students:</p>
<li>what are UVA’s strongest programs?</li>
<li>how is premed at UVA? strong or weak? </li>
<li>what do most freshmen study - what are the most popular undergrad majors?</li>
</ol>
<p>thanks in advance. i’m actually going to visit UVA later this summer too, so we’ll see what happens.</p>
<ol>
<li><a href="http://www.web.virginia.edu/iaas/data_catalog/institutional/data_digest/deg_major.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.web.virginia.edu/iaas/data_catalog/institutional/data_digest/deg_major.htm</a></li>
</ol>
<p>as for 1 and 2 if you have read any of the threads here, uva is a strong school overall and if you were to change your mind about premed you would have lots of other strong majors to choose from. we have the #2 school for business undergrad in the country (wharton is 1). from what ive heard and seen premed here is good.</p>
<p>What makes UVA unique is the uniquely strong balance between academics and social/extracurricular activities. Among public schools, it has the highest graduation rates in the country - indicative primarily of student strength and happiness.</p>
<p>You shouldn't be concerned about the strength of individual programs at the undergraduate level. At most top schools, departments and classes are more or less the same in quality, and chances are that you'll end up changing your plans at some point.</p>
<p>"Premed" is what you make of it. There's no formal "premed" program at UVA or any other top school. If you aspire to attend medical school, you'll take the required courses and participate in certain extracurriculars. Does UVA provide you with the resources necessary for getting into any medical school in the country? Yes.</p>
<p>First years study a variety of things. Popular majors for graduating fourth years tend to be government, economics, foreign affairs, biology, psychology and business.</p>
<p>Here's a piece of advice for you during your college search: you're wasting your time if you're trying to distinguish differences in departmental quality and "premed" programs at top schools, particularly the publics. You should focus on overall quality/prestige and student life (something that most high schoolers - particularly CCers - disregard).</p>
<p>uva's engineering school is also really good and the BME major is done by many people who are premeds</p>
<p>BME (or any engineering major) would be a foolish choice for you if you want to go to medical school, unless you genuinely enjoy engineering and all its associated work.</p>
<p>no i mean if you dont like engineering then don't be in e-school, but if you like engineering and also are planning to go to med school, then many people choose the BME option. but you can major in whatever you want</p>
<p>yea i have a 2nd yr bme friend and her and a lot of her friends in bme all recently decided to be pre-med.. talk about stress</p>
<p>The stress is not as bad as it seems. With BME being average on the E-School difficulty spectrum, a Biomed going Pre-Med is not that much more difficult in coursework. Biomedical Engineering courses can count to Biology courses so the real change is to take Orgo for tech electives. Taking care of Orgo in second year would be smooth sailing until the MCATs.</p>
<p>If you want real stress, go Pre-Med with Chem E. In my first year, I knew about a dozen Pre-Med Chem E's. After two years, I know zero with one leaving the face of the Earth.</p>
<p>Yea, there's just no point in doing all of that work. If you want to go to medical school, major in some easy humanities subject and spend your free time playing frisbee and chugging beer. You'll be a better person for it.</p>
<p>^^^ hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. That's the best thing i've seen on this board. Ever.</p>
<p>I agree with him though. Engineering is ridiculous enough without having to do pre-med with it. BME would be the ONLY E-major I'd suggest doing with pre-med, just because they share similar classes. Taking some summer classes would help a ton also. Then again, there would still be limited frisbee playing/beer chugging...extremely limited. Take a humanities/science major of some sort, such as bio/chem if you really want to be technical, or physcology/sociology if you want to be a more "people-friendly" doctor. You're going to be in school for a long time, so you might as well enjoy it while you can.</p>
<p>To all future engineering majors: Don't kill yourself. Please haha. Yes, you will enter college bright-eyed and saying "yes, I can study an engineering major, AND do pre-med, AND join a fraternity/sorority, AND play an intramural sport, AND go out and have friends and have fun, AND still eat/sleep". But realize your boundaries, and take it slow at first. Take your time an enjoy college. Find a way to take the harder classes over the summer either at a community college, or at UVA. Get out, meet people, and enjoy college. Yes, there will be some nights where your basketweaving-major friends will be able to go party until the break of dawn, get up, get smahed again for a football game, and basically stay drunk thursday night-sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, you'll be inside, studying for a calc test, a chem test, a sts paper, all while hoping to get more than 5 hours of sleep. That's life in an engineering major. But take the time you can to enjoy college and reach out to stuff outside of engineering classes, use your humanity electives to branch out into a course that just sounds cool and use it to broaden your horizens, and have fun! Take some breathers and come up for air every once in awhile, your four years will be very rewarding, both intellectually and personally. </p>
<p>And chug some beer, atleast once. It's college, let go of your morals.</p>
<p>Also realize that your basketweaving major friends will likely be at least as well off as you after graduation, should that be their goal ;) . <<-------(cynical economics major who values efficiency and free time above all else)</p>
<p>
Also realize that your basketweaving major friends would kill to be as well off as you after graduation, should that be their goal.
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<p>Fixed :D <=======Insane Computer Engineering Major who should be working on interfacing a Bluetooth module with a programmable TI microcontroller.</p>
<p>Cav: economics isn't basketweaving. I think we both know what majors are though... =P</p>
<p>My (sometimes insane) physics teacher used to call anything outside of engineering/physics/math (which includes econ.) "basketweaving". I still think of it everytime I hear someone complain about their project of creating a scrapbook of their childhood and how it took them a full hour. It's like "realllyyy? My statistics homework problem took me an hour and a half...and I still have ten more to do".</p>
<p>Don't butcher my words, UVAMalex. We wouldn't want the young'uns here getting the wrong idea about how the world works.</p>
<p>shoebox, compared to physics/math, economics certainly is basketweaving. However, the economics major (to me) is superior because it affords a great deal more leisure time while sacrificing few job opportunities. MC, IB, PE, yay!</p>
<p>Seriously :D<=======Insane Future Engineering and Physics Major who should be working on controlling a biofeedback system with a parallax microcontroller</p>
<p><em>edit</em> darn you cav and shoe for posting before me! refer to malex's post for details</p>
<p>
[quote]
Insane Future Engineering and Physics Major
[/quote]
</p>
<p>$10 say your plans change and you end up majoring in slavic studies :) .</p>
<p>I know a few students who aspire for that double major like ehiunno yet not as qualified as him, and they are still double majoring to this day. </p>
<p>We engineers can do ANYTHING!</p>
<p>I win because I'm going to be the only elementary school teacher in the world who knows Perl.</p>
<p>lol at hazelorb. While your at, just go for the whole gang of languages. Last I checked it was a prereq for elementary school teachers to know both Ruby and Python, as well as at least 3 different assembly languages, an OOP BASIC, and at least two esolangues (I would go with lolcode and brain****). And those are only the prereqs ;)</p>
<p>At Cav, you bet! Slavic studies ftw! But in all seriousness, your probably right. My interests are so broad that I could easily see myself majoring in Eng Sci, EE, CE, CS, Math, Physics, Econ, or Philosophy and enjoying it. Physics is my first love, the other one may be a toss up, or I may not do physics at all and end up doing just engineering. Or eng with an econ minor or something else.</p>
<p>and now to magically make this post relevant, I think thats one of the best parts of UVa. There really are no bad departments, and if you make a switch, you can be guaranteed you will end up in another strong department. When it comes down to it your future employer or grad school will think its a very good thing that you went to UVa no matter what department you were in.</p>
<p>edit: that **** was not me trying to be vulgar, thats actually the name of the programming language :)</p>
<p>i know python :P just a tiny bit, though. everything kind of pales in comparison to perl. malex is privy to this discussion a lot on our anime club forum.
<a href="http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/%5B/url%5D">http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/</a> so seriously this is a great story - i was on the train back to cville and this guy randomly sits next to me. towards the end of the ride i look over and he is CODING, so i point this out to him and we get into a great discussion and he told me to look those up.
i will have to check out those two you referenced
i have a friend at harvard who is learning ruby on rails. i will have to ask him how it is going. does ti-89 language count as one of those prereqs. hahahaha.</p>