Charlottesville & U.Va.

Charlottesville was formed by a charter in 1762 along a trade route, Three Notched Road, now known as US Route 250, that led to the Capitol in Richmond, VA. Charlottesville, affectionately known to locals as C’ville, was named for Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen consort of the United Kingdom and wife of King George III.   Charlottesville is best known as the home of two US Presidents, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Monroe’s Highland; nearby in Orange, VA, is Montpelier, the home of James Madison.  Monticello, Jefferson’s mountain-top home, attracts approximately half a million visitors every year. Please enjoy this short video about what Charlottesville has to offer!

Charlottesville has four seasons: Winters can be cold, Spring and Autumn vary from cool to warm, and Summer is generally hot and humid, but nice.  Snowfall is highly variable from year to year. The city is located in the center of the Commonwealth of Virginia along the Rivanna River and just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Charlottesville offers several attractions and venues for its relatively small size, including wine and beer tours, ballooning, hiking, and world-class entertainment. The city is both the launching pad and home of the Dave Matthews Band as well as the center of an active indie music scene.

The University of Virginia is a public research university in Charlottesville, VA. It was conceived and designed by Thomas Jefferson and established in 1819. UVA is one of the eight original Public Ivy universities, and it is the only university campus in the United States designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  In the 2019 edition of the U.S. News and World Report’s National University Rankings, the school was listed as America’s 3rd best public university, surpassed only by UCLA and UC Berkeley. Students, staff, faculty and locals affectionately refer to UVAs campus as “the Grounds”.                 

The student composition of the University was described in a feature article in the 2006 America’s Best Colleges edition of U.S. News and World Report as being “chock full of academic stars who turn down private schools like Duke, Princeton, and Cornell for, they say, a better value.”  Indeed, in 2008 the Center for College Affordability and Productivity named the University the top value among all national public colleges and universities, and in 2009, the University was again named the “#1 Best Value” among public universities in the United States in a separate ranking by USA TODAY and the Princeton Review.

The University of Virginia has an honor code, formally known as the Honor System. The Honor System was founded by Virginia students in 1842 after John A.G. Davis, chairman of the faculty and professor of law, who was attempting to resolve a conflict between students, was shot to death; the organization remains student-run today.  In the wake of the shooting, law professor Henry St. George Tucker, Sr. proposed a basic honor pledge as a gesture of confidence in the honor of Virginia students. In modern times, the Honor System is composed of three tenets: a student will not lie, cheat, or steal. It extends to all matters academic and personal, and the sole sanction for a confirmed Honor System violation is dismissal from the University. This is called the “single sanction”.