Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Top Questions

That we are a school out in the country and there are lots of rednecks

Down-to-earth, well-rounded

That we're all about football.

Most of the stereotypes I've heard come from UVa students or from people who tend to only know our school because of the UVa-Tech rivalry. Despite the fact that UVa students are supposed to more sophisticated than us and thus presumably above petty insults, there are many stereotypes about VT and VT students. The gist of these stereotypes is that our student body is composed of UVa rejects, rednecks who want to study agriculture, and airheads who only come here because we have a good football team. However, there are positive stereotypes too, and those include the perception we are very strong in engineering and that the students involved in this or a related discipline are very hard working, though probably not brilliant on the level an engineering student at Cornell might be.

Virginia Tech students love football and their school. While they love the idea of Virginia Tech and everything it stands for, they don't necessarily want to help continue it make it what it is. Most students won't volunteer or help others out. The stereotype is that Virginia Tech has hicks and a focus on agriculture.

I've never really heard sterotypes about VT students, i'm not quite sure if that's a good or bad thing?? It may just be because not a lot of people focus on attendening VT in my area....

Some people feel as if Virginia Tech is a "white school" due to the fact that about 74{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of the students who attend are of the Caucasian race. However, these people fail to realize that although there is a large population of Caucasian students, there are still thousands of students who are of different races due to the approximately 26000 people who attend.

Stereotypes range from being "hippy, tree-hugging" liberals mixed with very conservative "back woods" hicks. There's also the stereotype of being slackers and less preppy than UVA.

It is unfortunate that people not familiar with the Virginia Tech community associate the campus' remote location with the school as a whole. Yes, there is a cow field adjacent to the main drive into campus and our school offers a strong agriculture and farm animal veterinary science program, but that does not mean every student is waking up at dawn to gather eggs from their own personal chicken coop. Blacksburg is the location of Virginia Tech, not the identity. We are proud to say that our school is located in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, but we are not all country folk. You are just as likely to see a student wearing designer clothes as you are to see one wearing a camo suit. We are just all different people and don't conform to any stereotype. That is probably one of the best aspects of being a Hokie. No matter how unique your interests are, there will be someone who shares them with you. Virginia Tech might have stereotypes, but in no way are we living down to them.

Having spent four years here, my best guess at a stereotype would be a southern drawl and an obsession with football. The scenery as you drive into campus seems to confirm these. The open fields with cows and Lane Stadium are among the first to meet the eye.