<p>I didn’t mean it is not rigorous. I just mean it’s probably at least a little more laid back than many private counter-parts, many of which are pre-professional factories of sorts (given that, classes, especially pre-prof. cores in sciences get extremely tough content wise. Here, it’s tougher to grapple w/the material than to get the grade in such classes. Getting the grade is a matter of working the curve if there is one).<br>
UVA is a tough grader like most public schools, I forget that (and non-honors classes are large and certainly more rigorous than most publics, which kind of equalizes the difficulty in terms of environment between it and private peers). But my friend friend admits that his friends at UVA (and many other schools) have not really experienced the “conceptual” rigor that he has in science courses here (he let them see his pdf files w/work on it for courses that they took at the same time). It may have some hints of truth if UVa is anything like Berkeley for example. Whose work/exams I’ve viewed before. It’s definitely hard and requires quite an adjustment, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to what I or this friend has seen in counterparts here.<br>
I was speaking for UVA as a whole, not really the honors program. He would may have been more supported within the realms of the honors program than he is here for all I know. Picture being in a class with a prof. that makes the course on par or harder than maybe even the UVA honors counterpart, but is instead 2-3 times the size of that honors class, is graded on a curve vs. the average of a bunch of extremely talented students. Sometimes, even with a great, somewhat nurturing lecturer/prof., it’ll be so competitive, that if you slip up or don’t catch on as fast as everyone else, you’ll still finish on the wrong side of the curve. That can suck badly.</p>
<p>Some science profs. here(luckily normally it’s the better ones) teach classes like biology or organic chem. near the same level as some profs. would teach an advanced undergrad. course on the topic at a peer institution (UVA, top 20s w/e; and this is in a somewhat typical lecture setting, so it can be very brutal). Basically, the better profs. here are almost crazy with their expectations (if only I could show you what I meant) and definitely require lots of “outside the box thinking”.</p>