The college is named for the Giant Sequoia trees native to the nearby Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Its mission at that time was to provide inexpensive, lower-division college education to local high school graduates who intended to transfer to a traditional four-year college.

College of the Sequoias' main campus is in Visalia, but it also has full-service centers in Hanford and Tulare.

These include: Corcoran, Dinuba, Exeter, Farmersville, Hanford, Ivanhoe, Lemoore, Lindsay, Orosi, Porterville, Strathmore, Three Rivers, Tulare, and Woodlake.

The current enrollment of COS is 11,141 students,[2] and the college offers a variety of transfer, vocational, and community-based classes, including the fire/police academies for Tulare and Kings counties.