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University of Virginia

1826 University Ave, Charlottesville, VA

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The University of Virginia was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, who designed the original campus himself — a complex he called the "Academical Village," centered on the Rotunda, a domed library building modeled on the Pantheon in Rome that Jefferson considered one of his proudest architectural achievements alongside Monticello. Jefferson's original design deliberately placed the library, rather than a church, at the physical and symbolic center of the university, a break from the religiously oriented campus layouts of most other early American colleges that reflected Jefferson's Enlightenment-era emphasis on secular scholarship over religious instruction. UVA's Darden School of Business and its law school have each built strong national reputations, and the university's "Honor System," a student-run code prohibiting lying, cheating, and stealing with a single sanction of expulsion, has operated continuously since 1842, making it one of the oldest and strictest student-governed honor codes at any American university. The university's combination of a Jefferson-designed historic campus, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and consistently top-tier public-university rankings has made UVA one of the most selective public universities in the country, frequently grouped alongside UC Berkeley and Michigan as the strongest public research universities outside a state's largest metropolitan area.

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