Studying in the United States

Purdue University is the flagship institution of the Purdue University system, founded in 1869. The campus is located in the small city of West Lafayette – the most densely populated city in the state of Indiana.There are 13 academic colleges and schools offering more than 200 different undergraduate majors, 70 postgraduate programmes and vocational degrees. The very first PhD awarded by the university in 1897 was in agricultural, in line with the college’s long tradition in agricultural science and engineering. The first Bachelor of Arts degree was not offered until 1959.Even today, the engineering programme is still the most reputed and competitive, and the university has been influential on the history of aviation in the United States over the years.  The very first college credit in flight training and the first four-year bachelor programme in aviation were offered by Purdue. In 1934 Purdue University Airport was established as the first university-owned airport in the country.Twenty-three Purdue alumni have become astronauts, including Neil Armstrong – the first person to walk on the moon – and Eugene Cernan – the last person to walk on the moon.In 2010 the newest school was founded: The College of Health and Human Sciences, combining the School of Nursing, the School of Health Sciences, the College of Consumer and Family Sciences and psychology and hearing and speech pathology majors from the College of Liberal Arts.In addition to more than 400 research labs, the Purdue Research Park, established in 1961, enables the university’s experienced researchers to develop their work in collaboration with private business and high-tech industries.Four Purdue scientists have won Nobel Prizes while at the university: Herbert C. Brown for Chemistry in 1979, Ei-ichi Negishi for Chemistry in 2010 and Otto Doering together with Kevin Gurney for Climate Change research in 2007.Among public universities in the United States, Purdue enrolled the most international students as of 2014. Twenty-two per cent of the student population is international, hailing from 126 different countries.On campus, the only building still standing from the original six buildings is University Hall – built in 1871, then known as the Main Building. John Purdue, the benefactor of the university, was buried directly across from its main entrance.

 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University – commonly referred to as Virginia Tech – was established in 1872 as a public land-grant research university. Its principal campus is in Blacksburg, Virginia and covers about 2,600 acres with with more than 130 buildings on site. It also has six regional facilities in Virginia state, a study-abroad site in Switzerland and a 1,800 agricultural farm near the Blacksburg campus. Virginia Tech offers more than 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programmes, taught by more than 1,400 full-time staff. Of its 30,000+ students, 83 per cent are undergraduates and about 17 percent are graduates.Virginia Tech has seven undergraduate colleges: Agriculture and Life Sciences, Architecture and Urban Studies, Engineering, Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Natural Resources and Environment, Pamplin College of Business, and Science. These provide more than 90 bachelor’s programmes. There are more than 150 graduate courses on offer at the graduate schoool, the College of Veterinary Medicine and the School of Medicine. The Virginia Tech Corporate Reseach Center provides a space near the main campus for businesses to work with the university and allow entrepreneurs to innovate and develop their business skills. The center is home to more than 180 companies with about 2,900 employees. In 2014, the total amount raised for research progarmmes was $513m. Researchers tend to focus on agriculture, biotechnology, ICT, healthcare, energy management, sustainablity and many other areas in science and the humanities. In 2015, 34 patents and 25 licence option agreements were awarded.