University of Virginia

You Are an Adult

At UVA, you make your own decisions. If you want to party until the break of dawn, that's your choice, but don't expect sympathy if you failed to take care of your responsibilities first. The staff isn't there to be your parent and it will not baby you. It takes care of its duties and allows students to take care of themselves for everything else. It fosters a lot of maturity on the part of the student, which is perfect for a school such as UVA, where you need to learn time management to get good grades.

Campus police isn't too strict about drinking as long as you aren't doing it in front of their face and their prime concern is your safety, if anything is to happen, not snitching. With that said, drugs aren't tolerated as much, but they are illegal to all people, all the time.

UVA encourages you to be an adult, and allows you to suffer the consequences of all of your actions, good and bad, so you will find yourself treated with a lot of respect and given autonomy here.

Buses Are Excellent

University buses all run on a 10 minute schedule during most of the day during the week. All on-grounds housing has a bus stop, and the furthest place takes about 20 minutes to get on-grounds. The school has a deal with the public transportation so that students can ride their buses for free too. Most are helpful and cordial as well.

Great for Me, but Not for Others

I haven't had any problems with UVa's financial aid, however I have only just completed my first year, and many of my upperclassmen friends have. Typically, the problems are easy to resolve if you actually go to the financial aid office, but it is quite a ways away, which is tedious, especially when the problems are things that are their fault. I will say that they are generous with the amount of money that they give, and many of my friends did get some sort of aid. My advice to future students is to just stay on top of them so that nothing major pops up.