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Even though the University of Virginia is a great school that provides its students with numerous academic opportunities, there are a few drawbacks in my opinion. Like any fairly large university, the majority of classes are going to be large. In many instances you are one of 200-450 students in a class.

Some students like this academic setting because the professor does not have any idea whether or not you have attended class, which provides you with a lot more freedom. The professors all have teaching assistants (TA) to lead discussion sections and to do all of the grading for the course.

You could have signed up for a class that is taught by a world-renowned faculty member, but your grade depends on that of a random teaching assistant. In this type of setting it can be difficult to establish a relationship with your professor, which is very important in times when you need to ask for a letter of recommendation for medical school, law school, etc.

Most times you have a much better relationship with your teaching assistant than the professor if he even knows you at all.

As you choose your major and you take higher-level courses in that discipline the class sizes do get smaller. I was a history major and the smallest class that I had was my thesis course in which there were 15 students.

Even though I was a history major, I was on the “pre-medicine” track and took all of the prerequisites for medical school. It was in these courses that I felt the biggest drawback of attending a larger university.

All of the “pre-med” courses such Biology I,II Chemistry I,II, and Physics I,II were introductory courses that had as many as 450 students per semester. All of the tests were multiple choice, which certainly had its pluses and minuses.

Having a multiple choice test was nice in the fact that if you did not know a answer you had a 25% chance of getting it correct by randomly guessing. However, in most instances I felt that the multiple choice tests were a con rather than a plus specifically in courses such as chemistry or physics that require a great deal of mathematical calculations.

In these courses, you could understand the problem and make one small mistake at the end resulting in an incorrect response. Rather than getting partial credit for knowing how to do the problem and understanding the concept, you get no credit for your response. This can be extremely frustrating.

Furthermore, someone who is very good at guessing, which is a skill, can perform very well in the course without really understanding the material. Graduate teaching assistants as opposed to the actual professor teach the laboratory sections of the corresponding courses.

Some of the teaching assistants were great and were very helpful. There were others, however, who did not know what they were doing, had a hard time explaining concepts or answering questions. It is frustrating when your grade depends upon which teaching assistant you are assigned, which is completely random.

UVA Corcoran Department of History

UVA School of Medicine

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