Academics at Georgia Tech are extremely rigorous, to say the least. GPAs are very low for freshmen and sophomores; either students study a lot and they simply don't do well, or they study very little and they don't do well as a result. I think it's a combination of the two. There are certainly a lot of younger students who aren't used to the rigorous and competitive atmosphere at GT and so they underestimate what their professors and fellow classmates expect from them. I used to think doing well here was a function of the amount of work and studying I put in, but I quickly realized you can study for hours and hours and still bomb a test. Succeeding at Georgia Tech takes a lot of hard work AND a knack for knowing exactly what professors are looking for on exams and projects. It's also important to know where to go and who to talk to in order to find answers to the tough questions.
I majored in biomedical engineering, which was one of the most rigorous majors at Tech and seemed to have the greatest number of overachievers (pre-meds). I thought I was hot stuff in high school, but when I came to Tech, I could barely scrounge an above-average grade on even an "easy" exam. Things got much better as I started getting into my major classes and as I learned "the system," but classes were still challenging up to the end. Ostensibly, it would seem like Georgia Tech students work together on homeworks and projects and studying because they're "all in the same boat", in that most people study a difficult major. But in reality, while there is a lot of camaraderie in academics, people are still very competitive and they will do whatever is needed to ace the class and get a recommendation letter from the professor. That's life.
I was fortunate enough to take advantage of the undergraduate research opportunities at Georgia Tech. It was a good way for me to use my coursework for a real-world application, and I would recommend it to anyone.
My major didn't allow me to take too many electives without prolonging graduation, but I took one great class on the history of city planning in the school of Architecture. The professor, D. Allen, was probably the most engaging teacher of any class I took. Most of the other professors were approachable, but I wouldn't quite go so far as to call many of them "welcoming." They answered questions and held open office hours, but many of them also headed research labs and so you could tell teaching undergraduates was not a top priority. But many took the time to prepare thoughtful lessons and offered to stay after class to answer questions. I remember one professor in particular, R. Gleason, who used to stay with a group of four or five of us for at least 20 minutes after every class to answer
When I came to college, I expected lounging at a coffee shop, discussing politics and other world issues with my coffee-drinking college buddies. Don't we all expect something like that? The reality is much different. It was rare that I had intellectual conversations with anyone but my closest friends. But as I visited friends from other schools, I noticed they didn't really live out my fantasy either. I can't exactly blame Georgia Tech for this. That said, if you love talking about computers, there's always someone to converse with.
The education at Georgia Tech is definitely geared toward getting a job as opposed to going to graduate or medical school. There were monthly career fairs and a huge cooperative education office (Google it). But that's not to say it's impossible to go to graduate school from Tech, it's just a little more difficult because the GPAs tend to be lower.