Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ("Virginia Tech") is a public land-grant university founded in 1872, serving, according to its mission statement, "the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation, and the world community." It is taxpayer-supported.
It has 26,370 students on-campus, about 17% of whom are graduate students. It has a strong sports and engineering programs, resulting in much larger percentage of male students than most colleges: 58.1% male and 41.9% female. Many of its students are from foreign countries.
Its English Department has received some attention after one of its seniors, Seung-Hui Cho, massacred 32 students and faculty on April 16, 2007. Cho had written and submitted as coursework disturbing papers that, in hindsight, appear to reflect an unstable person obsessed with violence.