It serves as predominantly rural highway in the Inner Banks region and arterial road in and around Greenville.

Now going in a northwesterly direction, it splits and then reconnects with NC 125 in Scotland Neck, overlapping briefly with US 258 in town.

The NC 903/NC 125 concurrency continues to US 301 in Halifax where it finally splits going west towards I-95 and then to US 158, bypassing Roanoke Rapids.

Sharing one last concurrency with US 158, it breaks north at Lttleton, going through the Lake Gaston area by first crossing the Roanoke River, travels through the community of Elams, then swings west over Songbird Creek and then finally north into Virginia, where it downgrades to secondary state road 903.

[4] Between 1980 and 1982, NC 903 was extended west, from I-95, on new primary routing to US 158; it then made its final north extension, between 1984 and 1990, by overlapping US 158 to Littleton and then through the Lake Gaston area to the Virginia state line, south of Ebony.