A Junior's Review of VT

Introduction
Virginia Tech is a great school and rarely do I meet people dissatisfied. However during my years I have noticed a correlation between the people who have, in fact, been dissatisfied with their college experience. The first being students with girlfriends outside of VT, and the second being students who applied to much more difficult schools and ended up going to VT because it was one of the only schools they were accepted too. Blacksburg is a remote location in southwest Virginia four or five hours from VA Beach as well as Northern Virginia/Baltimore. I have met a few love birds who find it terribly inconvenient to see their significant others due to the location of my school. Likewise, students who applied to UVA or even Ivy League schools generally do not love VT because they are constantly feeling that they are not good enough. Ivy League schools are regarded throughout the country as top programs while VT's influence of being a great school is generally only well known in the south. Only recently has VT been a top program in fields outside of technical fields and people particularly in the North are not aware of the achievements and honors VT has recieved in its Business/communication/liberal arts schools.

Campus Life and Social Life
VT excells in all areas of social/campus life. There are constantly people outside playing volleyball, basketball, or playing with a frisbee. There are something like 20 bars in the area, but carding and underage drinking at bars is hard to come by. Hundreds of clubs for whatever you could possibly ever want to do, and a very strong Greek Life. The greek life makes up 20% of the campus and is quite organized compared to other schools. Intramural sports are always extremely professional and very competitive. Outside of the bars there is a lot of drinking at apartments and fraternity houses. Generally you can party every night of the week if you really wanted to. Just about any fraternity has a designated driver program so drunk driving is generally a rarity on campus which is definitely a good thing. One complaint I have often heard is how small Blacksburg is. This often times comes from urban students who grew up outside of a large city. I hear this complaint occasionally but even the people complaining are not dissatisfied, they just acknowledge the difference. Advertisement
Academics
Engineering, computer science, and architecture are regarded as the most difficult majors. Likewise they are difficult and the courseload is hard. Architecture majors generally seem to log something like 30 hours a week in lab working on their projects. These three majors are what VT is best known for. The Pamplin college of business is on the upward march towards a top 25 program in the country. Our HTM department in particular is like 10th in the nation. VT is often overshadowed by UVA in this area, but excelling at VT will get you just as far as excelling at UVA so if you like VT better campus wise I know you will not regret your decision. Workload for business is generally not too difficult and one can easily swing a 3.0, with a 3.6 or 3.7 needing only a bit more commitment and preperation. Academically all areas are getting more and more competitive so now is a good time to get a degree because its value will only go up.

Student Body
I have friends from NJ, NY, VA, MD, NC, SC etc. Everyone is different and that is very appealing. From true hick to uptown urban to your basic upper middle class suburban student it all depends on what crowd you hang out with. There are more guys than girls and sometimes that becomes very apparent. But again it just depends on who you hang out with.

In Closing...
I love VT, its big but you dont feel it. Once you find your niche everything becomes much smaller and you appreciate the fact that you can meet a new amazing person everyday. Furthermore mistakes are easy to cover up, and if you decide to change your social group completely, one could easily do that and start over.