At West Virginia University you’ll have the best of rolling green hills and the vibrant city life. On campus you’ll see both historic brick buildings and brand new constructions, including a residence hall, baseball stadium, auditorium, and engineering research building completed in 2015 alone. To travel between WVU’s three campuses, faculty, staff and students can take the Public Rapid Transit for free. The “PRT” as it’s called is a one-of-a-kind automated and electric-powered shuttle system with 70 cars traveling along a network of raised tracks. When classes are done for the week you’ll have plenty of fun activities to do right on campus. Grab your friends and hit up the student center where you can fill up on Sbarro’s pizza, show off your skills at glow-in-the-dark bowling, or check out a comedy show at the Side Pocket restaurant (did we mention there’s free food?). If a relaxing afternoon surrounded by nature is more your style, lace up your sneakers and trek over to the 91-acre WVU Core Arboretum for a group hike or trail run.

If you like to take classes on your own time you have plenty of options. As an undergrad you can choose from online degree and certificate options like early childhood development, multidisciplinary studies, and nursing RN-to-BSN. If you’re ready to study at the master’s level check out WVU’s 31 online graduate degree and certificate program offerings, which include clinical rehabilitation and mental health counseling, forensic accounting and fraud examination, higher education administration, legal studies, public health, software engineering, and sport management. Some online programs like nursing and sport management require students to complete residencies, which are great opportunities to gain real-world experience.

Let’s go Mountaineers! WVU athletic teams compete at the NCAA Division I level and are members of the Big 12 Conference. If you’re a serious athlete who wants to join the ranks of WVU’s list of sports stars, see if your sport of choice is among the 17 varsity sports the university sponsors. Some of your options include baseball, basketball, football, gymnastics, rowing, tennis, and volleyball. WVU even has a co-ed rifle team, so if you’ve got sharpshooting skills you can try out for a team that has 17 national championships under its belt. The football team has scored 14 conference titles and often plays for a packed house at the 60,000-seat Milan Puskar Stadium. The women’s soccer team has also seen its fair share of success by playing in 16 straight NCAA championships and snatching six Big 12 Conference titles.

This research university is home to 27 research centers in which faculty members study a variety of areas including neuroscience, cancer, eye care, strokes, and alternative fuels engines and emissions. Each year, the university receives approximately 127 million dollars in grants and awards for sponsored research; in 2015 the National Institutes of Health granted 10.7 million to the Center for Basic and Translational Stroke Research for faculty-researchers to examine ways to reduce the negative effects of strokes. West Virginia University launched a now internationally recognized biometric systems program in partnership with the FBI, in which the faculty explores research interests that include DNA analysis, biomedical imaging, and biometrics mobile applications. Those sponsored research dollars have certainly paid off, because WVU’s researchers have celebrated numerous scientific breakthroughs through the years. They have identified a distinctive star system in outer space, successfully cloned an endangered species of American chestnut, and detected a device Volkswagen installed in its diesel vehicles to trick emissions tests– a discovery which made news internationally in 2015.