Northern Virginia Community College

Northern Virginia Community College, often abbreviated NVCC and colloquially as NOVA, comprises several locations in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and is both the second largest multi-campus community college in the United States and the largest educational institution in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Overview

Since its establishment in Alexandria in 1965, NOVA has added a number of locations. Among these are the Annandale Campus; Manassas Campus; Woodbridge Campus; Loudoun Campus in (Sterling); a Medical Education Campus (in Springfield); an extension of the Alexandria Campus in Arlington, called the Arlington Center; and an extension of the Loudoun Campus in Reston, called the Reston Center. In 2003-2004, the college enrolled 63,000 students in credit courses and some 250,000 more in non-credit offerings. The student body is economically and ethnically diverse, and a very large number of enrollees are international students or immigrants.

The school offers a wide variety of courses, and encourages students to enroll in four-year colleges after completing their NOVA education. To do so, it fosters a system of preferred transfers into public colleges and universities located in the Commonwealth, primarily George Mason University in Fairfax, the only public four-year school in Northern Virginia, but also other public four-year schools in Virginia such as the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Old Dominion......
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