State Of Virginia College Options

Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most famous of the nation's founding fathers was a renaissance man renowned for his many skills. But the former President's proudest accomplishment was founding the University of Virginia. He even requested that his role in creating the University of Virginia be featured in his epitaph over his presidency. Over 150 years later Thomas Jefferson would be proud of what the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has become. His influence Can be seen and felt all around the Charlottesville, Virginia college campus which is still commonly called "Mr. Jefferson's University."

The University of Virginia, UVa for short, is located in central Virginia just east of the blue ridge mountains. The Virginia college campus was designed by Thomas Jefferson himself and the university still makes use of most of the original architecture today.

The University of Virginia has long been considered one of the elite public colleges or universities and it holds its own in rankings that include the best private schools too. The majority of incoming freshmen are admitted to the liberal arts college. The student body considers the best departments to be history, English, chemistry, biology, and religious studies. To provide a well rounded view, students say the weakest departments are drama musical arts and mathematics. The most popular majors include commerce, psychology, and economics.

The University of Virginia is well known for its honor system which was instituted by students in 1842 after no one fessed up to shooting a professor on the lawn. Students are expected to follow a strict code of conduct and those who fail to abide by the honor system are quickly dismissed from the University of Virginia.

As you can imagine admission for out of state students is highly competitive and about one-third of the undergraduate student body is composed of out of state students. The incoming freshman class at the University of Virginia is highly qualified with nearly 100% of the freshmen admitted in the top 25% of their graduating high school class. Many students arrive on campus from Washington DC and the northern Virginia suburbs. The majority of out of state students are from the surrounding states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.

The student body at the university of Virginia is quite diverse. African-American And Asian American students each compose roughly 10% of the student body and the number of foreign students is growing. While race relations on the University of Virginia campus are not considered to be hostile some students have a sense that the black students tend to "self segregate" themselves.

Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia as a place where students could come together to "drink the cup of knowledge" but today's undergraduates seem to favor a different sort of brew. Undergraduates who are quite studious during the day have no problem changing into "Rowdy Wahoos" by night. The Wahoo is a fish that can drink more than twice its body weight.