Humanities at UVa vs. Rice

wahoogrl08
Sat, 03 Apr 2010 21:39:10 +0000

I don’t agree that UVA is impersonal. There are a lot of opportunities for students and faculty to interact, and where else is there a program where students get to take their professors out to lunch?

Classes CAN be big, that is undeniable, but there are plenty of seminar courses (particularly upper level) where you will have 20-30 students tops!

As far as how classes operate, it is usually a mix. For larger courses, a lot of times they will be lecture oriented; however, there may be a mandatory ‘discussion’ section that will occur 1x/week. Those are usually lead by graduate students, but you definitely get to go into the topic in greater depth. These sections are usually <20 students. For smaller courses, it is usually a mix of lecture and discussion, and for seminar courses, I found many (at least in the humanities, social sciences, liberal arts) to be highly discussion oriented. UVA’s English department is quite rigorous, and I believe many of the courses are in the 20-40 range (You’ll have to forgive me if some of my information is off a little as I haven’t signed up for a course in two years!).

There aren’t really any defined “pre law” programs at UVA. You are free to pursue a program that you feel will help you best prepare for law school, particularly as law schools often encourage non-history, political science and pre-law students to apply. (Economics, math and English are great programs that will help you prepare for the analytical/critical thinking skills for law school in addition to a traditional pre-law track.)

UVA does well for law school placements, including T-14 schools. There used to be a file on the pre-law advising page that listed a lot of statistics on law school acceptance based on where the student applied, their GPA and their LSAT. It appears, however, that their re-vamping their page and the links are not presently working!