That is not actually true. Many implies a majority only when used as a noun. As an adjective it simply means a large number. 1000 students (just picking a number) out of 16k is nowhere near a majority (and is, in fact, a small minority) but it is still a large number and qualifies as many. Considering that I don’t see the word “many” in any of Ants posts, but that I do see “most”, I wonder if you didn’t mean to type that “most” implies a majority. Which is obviously true.
Anyway, my kid hates UVA but will graduate from there because of the prestige and the value of a degree from there. Retention rates are in no way indicative of happiness of a student body which is why I disagree with using that as a data point in some of these college rankings. They also use the percentage of students that graduate in a certain period of time (4 yrs, 6 yrs, etc). That too is, in my opinion, a poor data set to use in determining student satisfaction with a school. Graduation rates are more a function of how well prepared students are for college and how many credits etc they go in with. UVA has high grad rates because they admit very smart kids who are prepared for college academically (and, to a lesser extent, because they are more driven than the average college student) IMO.
I am also surprised you only kew one person who didn’t like UVA. I have known dozens (either told to me by the students themselves or their parents), and that is out of probably only a couple of hundred that I have asked. A HUGE number of parents told me their kids hated it the first year but gradually became ambivalent (and with some eventually liking it).
I also know a TON of kids who love UVA and think it is the greatest school ever, but in my many decades of talking to kids and parents about colleges I will say that I have never seen a school with as significant a percentage of students who did not like it. Is it possible that is because of a relatively small sample size? (e.g. a few hundred over the years) Sure, but I doubt it.