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I'm not exactly an expert, being from Idaho, but I have family that lives in Philly who have been giving me advice on these schools as well (I'm considering Duke and Dartmouth, not really UVA at this point). Bottom line is that all of them are great schools and they are all strong academically (UVA is definately on par with the other two if you're a rodman scholar). If you go to any of them and do well, you will be able to get into any graduate school you want. UVA's admittance to grad school is obviously not as high, but that has more to do with more students going into the work force and just having slightly less talented students overall than the school itself.
I would choose more on location, size, etc. All of these schools are very different in those ways. UVA is more of the big state school (14,000 undergrads, 6,500 grads) in a mid-sized town of around 40,000. Duke is in a similar-sized town in North Carolina, so you get a bit more of that southern culture, and it's mid-sized (like 6,000 undergrads and 6,000 grads for a total of 12000). Also sports, especially basketball, are pretty big. Dartmouth is a slightly smaller school (like 4,500 undergrads 1,500 grads) in a small town of like 12,000. It's also gets lots of snow and is close to the mountains (which would make a huge difference for me being a die-hard skier).
Look for specific things that you might like/dislike about whatever program you're interested in. I'm looking at going into engineering. Dartmouth, for example, has only one "general" engineering major. You are kind of free to take classes in whatever areas of engineering you want to, and their core curriculum is very open to personal preference. Some people might like this, some might not. The engineering school also only has 800 students, which means a lot of personal attention.
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