Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech (VT), formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI), is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It 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 34,400 students; as of 2016, it was the state's second-largest public university by enrollment. It is ranked among the top 50 universities in the United States for total research expenditures, top 25 in computer and information sciences, and top 10 in engineering, the latter two of which are the highest rankings in the state, and manages a $522 million research portfolio. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". The university's athletic teams are known as the Virginia Tech Hokies and compete in Division I of the NCAA as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. VT has produced two Rhodes Scholars, four Marshall Scholars, 38 Goldwater Scholars, and 131 Fulbright Scholars. Among its alumni are eight Medal of Honor recipients, 97 flag officers, governors of two U.S. states, two astronauts, and one billionaire. Three Nobel laureates and one MacArthur Fellow have received a degree or served as faculty members at the university. As of 2015, VT had more than 240,000 living alumni worldwide. 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, 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.