The Pros and Cons of UVA

What is UVA’s reputation?

“beautiful campus” “steeped in history” “rigorous academics” “top undergraduate business program” “competitive atmosphere” “rich, white and preppy” “great college town” “70% of students are from Virginia” “great architecture program” “much harder to get into for out-of-state applicants” “dominant Greek scene” “students tend to be rather conventional” “surrounding area can be a bit sketchy” “some student clubs are hyper-competitive” “fairly small international population” “Top 5 law school”

UVA is a public university in the small Southern city of Charlottesville, Virginia with 17,000 undergraduates, two-thirds of whom come from Virginia. Overall the university is ranked Top 25 in the nation, and it’s also ranked Top 4 for public universities, behind only UCLA, UC Berkeley and University of Michigan.

The school has an impressive history: it was founded by former US President Thomas Jefferson, who was also an architect, and designed much of the campus himself. The reputation of UVA is that it blends a lively Greek party culture with rigorous academics. It’s your quintessential work hard/play hard Southern university: it’s warm, friendly, beautiful, fun, and academically challenging.

Delayed Admission: the good and bad.

When you apply to UVA, you apply directly to some of the undergraduate colleges like the School of Engineering, the School of Architecture, or the College of Arts and Sciences. And you either get in or you don’t. But for some of the colleges, like the hugely-popular McIntire School of Business (or “Commerce”), you can’t apply to the program until after you’ve completed your first year on campus. This is called delayed admission. And this can be good or bad, depending on your perspective.

The benefit of delayed admission is that you don’t need a spectacular high school resume, filled with business and leadership experience, to get into the program, since your application is primarily based on what you’ve done since arriving on campus: your grades, your clubs, and your essays. On the other hand, there’s no guarantee that you will get in. And at UVA, only about 50% of business school applicants are accepted. So you may find yourself stuck at a school studying something you don’t want to study. And you can always minor in business — because that’s open to everyone — but it’s not the same thing.

So the take-away is that if you know you want to study business, you have to be careful with delayed admission programs like the ones at UVA, Berkeley, UNC Chapel Hill, and Emory. Berkeley and UNC are unique in that they do guarantee admission to their business program to a very small, select group of high school applicants. And Emory has about a 95% acceptance rate to their business program; so after you complete your first year campus, you’ll have no problem getting in. But at UVA, it’s a 50/50 gamble.

The Pros of UVA…

#1: McIntire Business — UVA has one of the best undergraduate business programs in the country. It’s a 3-year program, so you apply after your first year on campus. It’s ranked Top 15 in the nation, Top 10 for Career Outcomes, and Top 3 for Academic Experience, which means how much students and alumni rave about the program. And as I mentioned, only about 50% applicants are accepted.

#2: College Town — The small city of Charlottesville, VA is widely regarded as one of the best college towns in America. It’s an easy walk from campus, or you can grab a quick shuttle. There’s live music, film festivals, farmers markets, restaurants of all kinds, bookstores, cafes. It’s a mix between a quirky mountain town, a foodie's paradise, and a small cultural capital—walkable, scenic, and student-friendly.

#3: The Honor System — UVA has a famous honor system that’s almost 200 years old, where every new freshman — or first year, as they call it — signs a pledge not to lie, cheat or steal. And it’s enforced by a student board. It used to be that they’d expel you for a single infraction; now you just get suspended. But students say you can leave your laptop out on a table, or leave your bike unlocked, and no one will take it.

#4: Self-Governance — While most universities pit the administration against students in a battle of wills, UVA really empowers students to run the show. And there are various student organizations that wield considerable influence on campus, which gives students a genuine sense of ownership and accountability.

#5: In-State Tuition — If you’re a Virginia resident, UVA is one of the best deals in higher education. You’ll save nearly $40,000 a year compared to out-of-state students, and you have a much higher admissions rate too.

#6: Jefferson Scholarship — This is one of the most generous merit scholarships in the country—a full ride plus a ton of perks. You can’t apply directly; your high school has to nominate you. And it has a very low acceptance rate of about 2%. But the school does accept about 40 students into the program each year, and one of my students from Connecticut won it for 2025.

The Cons of UVA…

#1: Hyper-Competitive Clubs — Getting into a consulting club or a prestigious student organization can feel harder than getting into UVA itself, with multiple rounds of interviews and essays. The culture in general at UVA is very achievement-oriented, so you can expect a lot of peer competition.

#2: Lack of Diversity: While UVA has become much more diverse in recent years, it still feels a bit white, preppy, wealthy, and classically Southern. About 50% of students are white, and about 70% of students come from Virginia. Only 5% of students are international, which is a bit low, even for a public university.

#3: Basic Students — One of the knocks against UVA is that even though the students are highly intelligent, a lot of them are “basic,” meaning conventional, unoriginal, cookie-cutter, everyone looks and acts the same. It’s obviously a stereotype. But it suggests there’s a lot of conformity on campus.

#4: Signature Lingo — When you get to UVA, you have to learn a new language. For example, you don’t call it the campus; you have to call it The Grounds. And you don’t say you’re a freshman; you say you’re a First-Year. And you’re not going to Charlottesville; you’re going to C’ville. Just something to know.

How to get into UVA…

#1: Be a Virginia Resident — Virginia state law mandates that at least two-thirds of the students at UVA must be in-state residents. That makes it considerably easier to get in for in-state applicants than out-of-state applicants. Compare the ED acceptance rate for in-state applicants (30%) vs. out-of-state applicants (21%). Or the EA acceptance rate for in-state applicants (25%) vs. out-of-state applicants (13%).

#2: Apply ED — If you’re not a Virginia resident, you should definitely consider applying Early Decision. The Regular Decision acceptance rate is about 13%, and applying ED almost doubles that rate to 21%. (Note that applying EA as an out-of-state resident doesn’t really boost your admissions odds at all: 13%.)

#3: Transfer - If you don’t get into UVA as a freshman, you may want to transfer in as a sophomore or junior. The school has a very high transfer rate of 33%, which is encouraging. But it’s important to know that as a public university, UVA has a standing agreement to accept many Virginia transfer students from two-year community colleges, which likely inflates that high acceptance rate.