UVA has produced 57 Rhodes Scholars, the most of any flagship university in the United States,[g] while its students and alumni have founded companies such as Reddit, Skillshare, VMware, and Space Adventures.

"[19] Virginia was already home to the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, but Jefferson lost all confidence in his alma mater, partly because of its religious nature—it required all its students to recite a catechism—and its stifling of the sciences.

UVA had no divinity school, was established independently of any religious sect, and the Grounds were planned and centered upon a library, the Rotunda, rather than a church, distinguishing it from peer universities still primarily functioning as seminaries for one particular strain of Protestantism or another.

[38] After Jubal Early's total loss at the Battle of Waynesboro, Charlottesville was willingly surrendered to Union forces to avoid mass bloodshed, and UVA faculty convinced George Armstrong Custer to preserve Jefferson's university.

[49] The fight for integration and coeducation came to the foreground particularly in the late 1960s, leading up to the May Strike of 1970, in which students protested for higher black enrollment, equal access to UVA admission by undergraduate women, unionization of employees, and against the presence of armed university police and recruiters of government agencies such as the CIA and FBI on Grounds.

[51] A Charter initiative was signed into law by then-Governor Mark Warner in 2005, negotiated with the university to have greater autonomy over its own affairs in exchange for accepting this decline in financial support.

[63][64][65] The university nonetheless instituted new rules banning "pre-mixed drinks, punches or any other common source of alcohol" such as beer kegs and requiring "sober and lucid" fraternity members to monitor all parties.

[66] In April 2015, Rolling Stone fully retracted the article after the Columbia School of Journalism released a scathing and discrediting report on the "anatomy of a journalistic failure" by its author.

In January 1895, less than a year before the Great Rotunda Fire, The New York Times said the design of the University of Virginia "was incomparably the most ambitious and monumental architectural project that had or has yet been conceived in this century.

[citation needed] The White buildings have the effect of closing off the sweeping perspective, as originally conceived by Jefferson, down the Lawn across open countryside toward the distant mountains.

[51] This nominal support from the state, contributing just $154 million of UVA's $2.6 billion budget in 2012–13, has led President Sullivan and others to contemplate the partial privatization of the University of Virginia.

[110] He encouraged university leaders to stop talking about privatization and instead push their state lawmakers to increase funding for higher education and research as a public good.

[11] The first breakthrough was when UVA School of Medicine researchers Jonathan Kipnis and Antoine Louveau discovered previously unknown vessels connecting the human brain directly to the lymphatic system.

[11] In the field of astrophysics, the university is a member of a consortium engaged in the construction and operation of the Large Binocular Telescope in the Mount Graham International Observatory of the Pinaleno Mountains of southeastern Arizona.

In 2019, researchers at NRAO co-authored a study documenting the discovery of a pair of giant hourglass shaped balloons emanating radio waves from the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

[161] President James Ryan announced at his inauguration in fall 2018 that in-state students from families earning less than $80,000 a year will receive full tuition scholarships.

Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are instead called first-, second-, third-, and fourth-years to reflect Jefferson's belief that learning is a lifelong process, rather than one to be completed within four years.

[174] There are a number of UVA undergraduate leadership opportunities that are offered in addition to the standard student government or fraternity and sorority positions found at many other universities.

In the spring of 2022, following decades of criticism and waning support, a proposal to replace the penalty of expulsion with a two-semester suspension passed a student referendum with over 80% of the vote and took effect immediately.

Although Honor Committee resources have been strained by mass cheating scandals such as a case in 2001 of 122 suspected cheaters over several years in a single large Physics survey course, and federal lawsuits have challenged the system, its verdicts are rarely overturned.

Another popular event is Foxfield, a steeplechase and social gathering that takes place nearby in Albemarle County in April, and which is annually attended by thousands of students from the University of Virginia, neighboring colleges, and local residents.

He held the position for sixteen years and, under his leadership, UVA added many significant hires who have demonstrated success near the top of their respective sports, including recent NCAA Champions Tony Bennett, Lars Tiffany, Brian O'Connor, and Todd DeSorbo, as well as former football coach Bronco Mendenhall.

UVA became the third program in ACC history to win 30 or more games in consecutive seasons and John Paul Jones Arena is considered one of the more intimidating trips for opposing teams to make.

[218] Physics professor James McCarthy was the lead academic liaison to the government in the establishment of Suranet, and the university has also participated in ARPANET, Abilene, Internet2, and Lambda Rail.

[219] Larry Sabato has, according to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, become the most-cited professor in the country by national and regional news organizations, both on the Internet and in print.

[220] Civil rights activist Julian Bond, a professor in the Corcoran Department of History from 1990 to 2012, was the chairman of the NAACP from 1998 to 2009 and was chosen to host the Nobel Laureates conference in 1998.

[221] According to a study by researchers at the Darden School and Stanford University, UVA alumni have founded over 65,000 companies which have employed 2.3 million people worldwide with annual global revenues of $1.6 trillion.

[223] Eight NASA astronauts and launch directors are UVA alumni: Karl Gordon Henize, Bill Nelson, Thomas Marshburn, Leland Melvin, Jeff Wisoff, Kathryn Thornton, Patrick Forrester; and Michael Leinbach.

The Pulitzer Prize has been awarded to eight UVA alumni: Edward P. Jones, Ron Suskind, Virginius Dabney, Claudia Emerson, Henry Taylor, Lane DeGregory, George Rodrigue, and Michael Vitez.

[k] UVA's alumni ranks also include others who have achieved widespread fame: computer science pioneer John Backus; polar explorer Richard Byrd; scientists Walter Reed, Stuart Schreiber, Daniel Barringer, Richard Lutz, and Francis Collins; artists Edgar Allan Poe and Georgia O'Keeffe; musicians Stephen Malkmus and Boyd Tinsley; self-made billionaire Paul Tudor Jones; national news anchors Katie Couric and Brit Hume; actors Tina Fey and Ben McKenzie; Team USA Olympic team captains John Harkes, Dawn Staley, and Claudio Reyna; NBA All-Star MVP Ralph Sampson and the NBA's eighth ever 50–40–90 shooter Malcolm Brogdon; two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champions Becky Sauerbrunn, Emily Sonnett and Morgan Brian; and voice actor Sam Riegel.