Virginia Tech

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly referred to as Virginia Tech (VT), is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. It was founded as the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1872.

The university also has educational facilities in six regions statewide, a research center in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, and a study-abroad site in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland. Through its Corps of Cadets ROTC program, Virginia Tech is a senior military college.

Virginia Tech offers 280 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to its over 38,000 students; as of 2016, it was the state's second-largest public university by enrollment. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research spending and doctorate production".

The university's athletic teams are the Virginia Tech Hokies and compete in Division I of the NCAA as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

History

In 1872, with federal funds provided by the Morrill Act of 1862, the Reconstruction-era Virginia General Assembly purchased the facilities of Preston and Olin Institute, a small Methodist school for boys in Southwest Virginia's rural Montgomery County. That same year, 250 acres (100 ha) of the adjoining Solitude Farm including the house and several farm buildings on the estate were acquired for $21,250 from Robert Taylor Preston, a son of Governor of Virginia, James Patton Preston. The commonwealth incorporated a new institution on the site, a state-supported land-grant military institute named Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.

Virginia Tech's first student, Addison "Add" Caldwell registered on October 1, 1872, after hiking over 25 miles from his home in Craig County, Virginia. A statue, located in the Upper Quad of campus commemorates Add's journey to enroll. First-year cadets and their training cadre re-enact Addison Caldwell's journey every year in the Caldwell March. They complete the first half of the 26-mile march in the fall and the second half in the spring.

The first five presidents of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College served in the Confederate States Army or the Confederate government during the Civil War as did many of its early professors including the first Commandant, James H. Lane, a VMI graduate and former Confederate General who taught civil engineering and commerce at the college and is the namesake of Lane Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, built in 1888. Its third president, Thomas Nelson Conrad, was a notorious Confederate spy who ran a covert intelligence gathering operation from a home in the heart of Washington, D.C. Its sixth president, Paul Brandon Barringer, was a son of Confederate General Rufus Barringer and a nephew of Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Daniel Harvey Hill.

In a nod to this southern heritage the Confederate Battle Flag was traditionally waved by cheerleaders at Virginia Tech football games and the Highty-Tighties played Dixie as a fight song when the Hokies scored a touchdown. A large Confederate flag also hung inside Cassell Coliseum where Virginia Tech basketball games are played. Since 1963, "Skipper", a replica of a Civil War cannon has been fired at football games by members of the Corps of Cadets when the team scores. The Confederate Flag was also prominently featured on all Virginia Tech class rings. The display of the Confederate flag at athletic events ended in the late 1960s after Marguerite Harper, a black woman attending Virginia Tech on a Rockefeller Scholarship for culturally disadvantaged students, was elected to the student senate during her sophomore year and made a successful resolution to end the practice. Following the resolution there was a large demonstration in opposition to the removal of the Confederate flag. The campus was covered in Confederate flags and "Dixie" was blasting from dormitory windows. Harper and her white roommate received hate mail and threatening phone calls, but the resolution stood, and the display of the rebel flag ended in 1969. The Confederate flag on Virginia Tech class rings became optional in 1972 and could be omitted at the student's request; it has since been removed from class ring designs entirely.

Organization and administration

Virginia Tech is a public university and one of Virginia's two land-grant institutions. Its academic programs are administered by nine colleges, the Graduate School, and the Honors College.

Board of Visitors

The board of visitors is the university’s primary governing organization responsible for the maintenance of the university, its property, and its students. The first board was established in 1872 by Virginia Governor Gilbert C. Walker. Since Virginia Tech is a public university, 13 of the board's 14 members are appointed by the Governor of Virginia. The fourteenth member, the president of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, serves ex officio. A minimum of 6 board members are required to be alumni of Virginia Tech and a minimum of 10 board members must be Virginia state residents.

Academics

Virginia Tech offers 116 bachelor's degree programs through its nine undergraduate academic colleges, 160 master's and doctoral degree programs through the Graduate School, and a professional degree from the Virginia–Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. In addition, the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute is a public-private partnership jointly managed by Virginia Tech and the Carilion Clinic founded on January 3, 2007.

Admissions

Virginia Tech received a record number of nearly 22,500 applications for the fall 2015 freshman class, an increase of 7.6% from the previous year's 20,897 applications for an overall admissions rate of 65.8%. The typical student offered admission had a high-school grade point average of 4.00, with the middle 50 percent ranging from 3.84 and 4.27. The average cumulative SAT score was 1250 (out of 1600), with a middle range ranging from 1160 to 1340. Of the 5,518 students who accepted the offers of admission (for an admissions yield of 38%), 18 percent accepted under the Early Decision Plan. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions is located within the Visitor and Undergraduate Admissions Center.

Virginia Tech offers a highly selective Honors College, which provides undergraduate students 11 different ways to earn Honors credits towards one of the five Honors degree options. Once admitted, Honors students are required to maintain a 3.6 GPA in order to remain in the program. Roughly one-fourth of the approximately 1,600 University Honors students live in one of the two University Honors residential halls, the Honors Residential College located in East Ambler-Johnston and the Hillcrest Honors Community.

For the 2013–14 academic year, the Graduate School at Virginia Tech enrolled 6,723 graduate students (4,465 full-time; 2,258 part-time) in its masters and doctoral programs.

The Pamplin College of Business received 381 applications for its incoming Evening MBA program and offered admission to 142. The class's average GMAT was 610, and mean undergraduate GPA was 3.4.

The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke, Va., received 4,403 applications for its eighth incoming class, the class of 2021, and offered admission to 42. The class's MCAT scores range was 503–520 (median 512, mean 512), and mean undergraduate GPA was 3.57.

In 2023, Virginia Tech became the second public university to end its use of legacy admissions, after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, banning affirmative action in college admissions. The university also ended its binding early decision program because it "created unneeded pressure on students [...] particularly those needing financial aid".

Rankings

In U.S. News & World Report's list of "2024 Best Colleges", Virginia Tech tied for 47th overall among national universities, tied for 20th among public ones, tied at 25th for "Most Innovative", ranked 156th in "Best Value Schools", and tied for 207th in "Top Performers on Social Mobility".

The Pamplin College of Business's part-time MBA program was tied for 19th overall by U.S. News & World Report in 2020. The Master of Information Technology program, jointly sponsored by the Pamplin College of Business and the College of Engineering, is ranked No. 4 in U.S. News & World Report's Best Online Graduate Computer Information Technology Programs. This interdisciplinary program is offered entirely online.

Programs in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies (CAUS) include architecture + design, landscape architecture, urban planning, and public administration. In its 2016 "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools" report, DesignIntelligence ranked the undergraduate architecture program 3rd nationally among both public and private universities. The graduate architecture program ranked 9th in the nation. For 2013, DesignIntelligence ranked the university's undergraduate and graduate landscape architecture programs No. 2 in the nation. In addition, DesignIntelligence ranked the university's undergraduate interior design program 6th and undergraduate industrial design program 3rd. The Planetizen 2012 Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs ranked Virginia Tech's MURP program as 19th. Virginia Tech's MURP program was also rated among the best programs in Technology, Land Use Planning, Environmental Planning, and Growth Management.

Kiplinger's Personal Finance places Virginia Tech 20th in its 2019 ranking of 174 best value public colleges in the United States.

Student affairs rankings

Virginia Tech received the following rankings from The Princeton Review in its 2025 Best Colleges Rankings:

Research

Virginia Tech's research and development expenditures (R&D) were $542 million in fiscal year 2019, which ranked 48th among education institutions in the nation and 2nd in the state of Virginia according to the National Science Foundation. As a result, Virginia Tech marked its 15th consecutive year of research growth, with the university's research portfolio more than doubling from $192.7 million in fiscal year 2000. The only Virginia institution in the top 50 of the NSF's rankings for research expenditures, Virginia Tech is No. 23 among public universities. The university's research expenditures rank it in the top 5 percent of more than 900 research universities and colleges. Each year, the university receives thousands of awards to conduct research from an ever-expanding base of sponsors. Researchers pursue new discoveries in agriculture, biotechnology, information and communication technology, human health, transportation, energy management (including leadership in fuel-cell technology and power electronics), security, sustainability, and a wide range of other engineering, scientific, social science, and creative fields. This research led to 36 patents and 17 license and option agreements in fiscal year 2013.

Fralin Life Science Institute

The Fralin Life Science Institute is an expansion of the Fralin Biotechnology Center, which was established in 1991, and is one of four investment institutes at the university. The expansion was established in 2008. Research at the institute is focused on the areas of vector-borne disease; infectious disease and microbial sciences; plant sciences; obesity; cancer biology; and ecology and organismal biology.

Their research strategic priority areas are research ecosystem, people, research opportunities, and research background. The institute’s main office and laboratory is currently situated in Steger Hall, in Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus. Fralin oversees five buildings on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg Campus in total. Supporting research centers affiliated with the Institute include the Translational Plant Science Center, the Global Change Center, and the Center for Emerging, Zoonotic, and Arthropod-Borne Pathogens.

The institute provides multiple opportunities for undergraduate research, including the First-Year Fralin Undergraduate program, Fralin Undergraduate Research Fellowship, and Fralin Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) was founded as the Center for Transportation Research in 1988 and employs more than 350 personnel. VTTI has more than $125 million in active research awards, and has a mission to save lives, save time, save money, and protect the environment. It is the second largest university-level transportation institute in the United States, and the largest group of driving safety researchers in the world. Facilities include the 2.2-mile (3.5 km), two-lane, fully instrumented Virginia Smart Road; connected-vehicle test beds in Southwest and Northern Virginia; more than 83,000 square feet of office and laboratory space; the VTTI/Center for Injury Biomechanics Crash Sled Lab; and the National Tire Research Center in Southern Virginia. These laboratories include an asphalt lab, fully equipped garages, instrumentation bays, and a machine shop for working on VTTI's vehicle fleet.

Campus

The Virginia Tech campus is in Blacksburg, Virginia. Most buildings are built of limestone in a neo-Gothic style. Notable green spaces include the Hahn Horticulture Garden, Virginia Tech Duck Pond, and the old-growth forest, Stadium Woods.

The central campus is roughly bordered by Prices Fork Road to the northwest, Plantation Drive to the west, Main Street to the east, and US 460 Bypass to the south, though it has several thousand acres beyond the central campus.

In the center of the Blacksburg campus lies the Drillfield, a large oval field running northeast to southwest, encircled by a one-way street that is known as Drillfield Drive. The Drillfield's name, coined in 1926 after the completion of Virginia Tech's first real stadium, Miles Stadium, stems from its use by the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets to conduct military drills. A waterway, Stroubles Creek, runs beneath the Drillfield on the south side. A three-sided conduit for the creek that retains the natural bed of the creek was installed in 1934, and, in 1971, the first two asphalt walks were added.

On the northwestern side of the Drillfield stand most of the university's academic and administrative buildings, including Burruss and McBryde Halls. On the southeastern side of the Drillfield stand most of the residential buildings, including students' residence halls, dining halls, and War Memorial Gym. Newman Library is on the eastern side of campus and connects to Torgersen Bridge, which spans the main road into campus, Alumni Mall. North of the Drillfield and northwest of Alumni Mall lies the Upper Quad, known to many students as military campus. The Upper Quad is home to the Corps of Cadets' barracks.

On the main campus in Blacksburg, most of the buildings incorporate Hokie Stone as a building material. In 2010, the board of visitors passed a resolution about using the gray stone, shaded by hues of brown and pink, in all building projects.

Extended campuses

The university has established five branch campuses:

Virginia Tech Hampton Roads Centers, Newport News and Virginia Beach

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