<p>Wheatmom,
I’m not in Engineering, so I’m taking the Physics that most pre-med students take. I think that the engineering students take a different one, unless they are considering engineering AND pre-med.
There is no official “pre-med” major at UVA, and shouldn’t be IMHO at UVA. But I refer to the term just to quickly summarize for you.
Engineering, as a whole, is VERY good at UVA, so not to worry. Maybe I’m just bad at Physics 
so you might not want to extrapolate that UVA has a “weak Physics dept.” based on my experience alone.
Though, since you asked, in my brief exposure to the physics dept., I have found that many of the Profs. barely speak English, and thus cannot teach or communicate so basically much of the instruction is worthless. The Profs. that do speak English have not demonstrated to me that they care in the least about us lowly undergraduates. This Prof. skipped many of our classes to work on their individual project and had a substitute cover. I hate to say this, but the substitute was better!! I wished my Prof. never came back! All of this is experience and my opinion of my physics experience to date at UVA.
I’m a 3rd year student so I know how and what the testing should consist of at UVA, and the testing for this course was tricky, covers things that were never taught to us (not like anything was), and just downright mean-spirited in my opinion.
As I’ve mentioned, before, I’ve taken some tough courses at UVA and worked hard for generally great grades. This is just off the charts a poor representation for UVA, IMHO.</p>