<p>How good is the foreign languages department and how good are the study abroad.</p>
<p>That’s vague. What foreign language(s) are you considering? Similar for study abroad, what do you want to know? There are a number of UVA sponsored programs, J-Term and summer programs that are terrific. You are also able to do study abroad through other schools/programs where you earn the equivalent of transfer credit. UVA also presently sponsors the Semester at Sea program.</p>
<p>spanish russian and German/italian/french</p>
<p>There are multiple departments, so you’ll probably want to do a little poking around the website to look at the various options. </p>
<p>There’s a pretty neat search engine on the ISO website that will let you look at different kinds of programs.</p>
<p>[Programs-Search</a> (simple)-International Studies Office](<a href=“http://www.studyabroad.virginia.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.SimpleSearch]Programs-Search”>http://www.studyabroad.virginia.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.SimpleSearch)</p>
<p>My brother took German while at UVA- he felt it was extremely demanding and challenging, particularly at the upper level. He didn’t particularly like his professor, but I know many others who really like the German classes at UVA. </p>
<p>Aside from the language part of the department, UVA German also has some excellent faculty. Laura Heins does really interesting research into German film/media and Gordon Stewart (also one of the Associate Deans) knows something about just about everything German-related (literature, history, architecture). I participated in his J-Term class a couple years ago (in Germany!) and he is easily one of my favorite faculty at UVA.</p>