UNC vs UVA (OOS)
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Anonymous
There's been a spirited debate over which school has the prettier campus. My son is considering both (he'll be an OOS applicant) and I've tried to share some of the reviews of the respective schools gleaned from this thread. His response? He wants to know which school, UVA or UNC, has more "babes." Kids these days! |
Anonymous
| UVA for sure. UVA is a higher ranked school and enjoys international reputation. 80%+ of UNC are in-state. |
Anonymous
| Heh, no, it’s practically the same percentage of internationals at 5% (UVA) and 5.4% (UNC). UVA does have the bigger endowment and those 33% enrolled OOS dollars help out. |
Anonymous
I don't think UVA has a better international reputation. Lived for quite a while in the UK. Neither is going to be well known there. Best known schools are Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Caltech (top a number of years in a row on UK global ranking), Yale, Penn (Wharton), etc. |
Anonymous
That is the prettier a lot of guys will focus on. I hate to say there is a correlation, but as schools become more selective, it appears to me their student bodies start to look more similar. As for campus (grounds) beauty, that is in the eye of the beholder. I think both are quite nice, but neither would probably be in my top 20 list. |
Anonymous
UVA's endowment is about twice the size of UNC, about $7B to $3.7B according to NACUBO, which is what is used on Wikipedia for 2019. There are links that show UVA with a larger endowment, but I suspect that includes quasi-endowments that NACUBO does not include. This is apples to apples. I've worked some in this area and you would really have to take into account which school at the university owns the endowment. It could belong to the medical school, law school, graduate business school, athletics, etc. Payout from it won't directly touch any undergraduates. The payout from endowment is only about 5% per year, so although the numbers sound big, there are lots of students to support. (Both of these endowments are probably currently taking a hit.) At UVA, 5% of $7B would come to about $14,200 per year per student. It is probably more weighted to grad students (particularly medical associated functions), but we'll just go with that amount. At UNC, it would come to about $5,800 per year per student with the same caveats as above on who really "owns" it. So the difference is perhaps $8,400 per student per year. UNC gets considerably more per student than UVA from the state. I'm not going to look for a current number, but there difference back in 2012 was $9,445 per in-state student at UVA to $23,792 at UNC. https://news.virginia.edu/content/sullivan-lays-out-universitys-budget-dilemmas . Difference there is $14K in favor of UNC. So UNC actually has a net advantage for these two sources of funds of about $6K per year. UNC uses its state bounty to charge lower tuition and fees that UVA, both for in-state and out. So that probably evens it back out again for total revenue, but explains why UNC is $10K less in this case. UNC has significantly higher revenues from sponsored research, about $1.1B per year to about $470M per year. That is a big difference. I don't think this should factor in though because in my view this has little benefit for undergraduates. From what I've seen of university finances, a substantial amount of this funding (the universities typically have to come up with about 30% of total cost) may in fact come from undergraduates. The universities don't want you to know this. I don't think there is that much difference between these schools. I think OP should just pick the one that seems like best fit and is affordable. |
Anonymous
Yes it does compared to UNC. No one has heard of UNC in Singapore, Hong Kong or Shanghai. But UVA is well known there. |
Anonymous
Completely false. Look at the research rates, as well as the relationships to tech. UNC is in the research triangle, UVA is-- where again? |
Anonymous
Have been there as well. Not in my experience. Neither one will be well known. |
Anonymous
Among the kids hoping to come to the US for college they are. Times/Shanghai world rankings- UNC- 54, UVA- 107 I'll throw in just because it makes the UVA people nuts, UMD-91 |
Anonymous
THE (Times) is mostly research with some metric thrown in for foreign students. The foreign metric in particular skews to UK schools, so Oxford is 1 and Harvard is 7. ARWU is perhaps less biased in my view, but again research and influential paper driven. That one has Berkeley above Princeton. Yale is behind UCLA. It isn't an undergraduate study ranking. UVA is in 151-200, UNC is 33, Maryland is 46. Again, I'd say these are really research university rankings. I think it is next to irrelevant for this decision. I don't think there is enough of a difference between UNC and UVA to merit choosing one over the other. Your daughter should choose the one she likes better. |
Anonymous
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Research has an impact on the quality of the professors, course offerings and the program, as those are designed by the professors, as well as quality of TA's as those are generally graduate students who choose colleges based on research. More research-accomplished professors also tends to mean more difficult and rigorous coursework. So to say research has no impact is simply untrue. There's a reason the most selective colleges tend to be research behemoths, and colleges like Cal Tech and MIT have more grad students than undergrads. UVA is actually rather alone in selective national universities in terms of its lack of research, although Georgetown and Notre Dame are also two other national universities that lack research, and Washington University's (and to a smaller extent Johns Hopkin's) reputation is primarily based on its medical school research than other subjects.
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Anonymous
| All this talk about funding and research capabilities is fine, but I was hoping someone with direct experience might comment on a PP's question about "babes" and which school leads in that department. |
Anonymous
Exactly. North Carolina is Virginia upside down. |
Anonymous
| UVA is closer to DC. More convenient. UNC is heavily instate which can make it harder to make friends coming from out of state. |