Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Top Questions

The football thing is just because we have a phenomenal amount of school pride and we absolutely love football season. Besides the fact that our team is good, it's a great social experience and we have, I think, some of the most spirited and active alumni around. It's really neat to have them come back to campus and be able to hang out with them. We love our sense of community between young and old, and football season is a perfect outlet to display and enjoy that. As for being a number, I think that's up to each student. There are a lot of people at our school, but if you want your professors and fellow students to know you, they will. If you want to keep to yourself and just be a face in the crowd, you will be. I think it's neat because it gives you the freedom to choose and it means that no one's holding your hand forcing you to participate in things you don't want to. It's more like the real world this way.

yes

We are definitely crazy about football. We have more school spirit than any other campus I know. Some of the classes are huge (depending on level and major), all my teachers know my name this semester, and I've never had any trouble getting individual help in all my time here--in fact, teachers have always been more than willing to help and always want you to come by their offices. There is absolutely no way Tech is easier than UVA. I know for a fact that they do not need to earn nearly as many credits to complete a major; one of my friends has about half the number of core classes for her major as I do, and we have the same major. I've had a teacher explain to us how that cannot be true, as he was a graduate student and UVA and teaches English as Tech--he knows what everyone has to do and thinks that Tech gets you more prepared.

This is NOT true...come to Tech and you'll find yourself surrounded by NOVA, Richmond, Va beach and kids from other states. This isn't to say that there are no students here from rural areas but the Hokie population is by no means made up of a rural majority.

Not at all. I have met many people who have many interests and who i would not consider nerds. Also I myself am not wealthy so that isn't true. Lastly stereotypes about the attractiveness of students are completely relative, of course there are many different kinds of people.

These are so wrong. I have met some fantastic and super intelligent people at Tech.

yes

1) No 2) Yes 3) No

Probably

NOT AT ALL, everyone here is very laid back and normal. Not a very up tight school and everyone is friendly

Generally, yes

Sometimes

There's possibly a grain of truth to the stereotypes about the student body, but those stereotypes are so broad they may be true about any large group of college students. I mean, there's bound to be at least one Sorbonne rejected, heifer loving, fan of women's tennis at UVa as well. In reality, the amount of diversity is pretty surprising at Tech. You're going to find kids who are here to get messed up before football games, party afterward, and spend Monday morning sleeping off a hang over but you are going to find more kids who are very dedicated to their studies but still know how to make time to enjoy themselves. The most surprising thing however, is the diversity of academic backgrounds. A lot of kids do engineering simply because they know it will make them a lot of money after they graduate but there are many kids who do other majors. We have one of the best undergraduate architecture schools in the nation, a very highly ranked chemistry department, and a large portion of students doing psychology, political science, business, or double majoring in one of those areas. I've also met a lot of very talented and intelligent students here as well. Just because you didn't get a high GPA in high school because you didn't care about doing the homework for AP English in 11th grade doesn't mean you aren't intellectually gifted. On a more personal note, I'd like to throw in that everyone I've met who is not a math major at VT assumes that our math department is excellent. In reality, it is not very highly ranked. I think that goes to show how stereotyped our school is when it comes to academics. There is an instant assumption that VT has excellent engineering, math, stats, etc, but when someone finds out our architecture school was ranked number one last year they give a look of complete shock.

No, about 33{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of our students come from Northern Virginia, which is certainly not rural and "hick." A lot of the freshmen are not bound by a sense of community, like we saw last year at this same school.

Not necessarily. People who come to Virginia Tech work hard to be here and chose to be here, therefore if there are many Caucasian students, then they worked equally as hard as anyone else to attend such a great school.

I would say they are not inaccurate, but not exclusive to the Virginia Tech campus.

As previously stated, these stereotypes are unfair and inaccurate.

Though we are located in Southwest Virginia, the majority of the population is from Richmond or Northern Virginia. This is not to say there aren't a fair amount of southern folks, but nowhere near a majority. There are also many students who come from Northern states like PA and NJ. As for the obsession with football- true.

No, every college has lots of strengths, we have a huge variety of options, it is not just a technical school