North Carolina State University - Raleigh

North Carolina State University--Raleigh is a public institution that was founded in 1887. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 24,536, its setting is urban, and the campus size is 2,200 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. North Carolina State University--Raleigh's ranking in the 2015 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 95. Its in-state tuition and fees are $8,296 (2014-15); out-of-state tuition and fees are $23,551 (2014-15).

North Carolina State University, also known as NC State, is the largest four-year college in the state. As such, students have a surplus of choices, from more than 100 programs to major in to more than 400 clubs and organizations to join. The university has a large Greek community that fields more than 20 percent of the student body. For other extracurricular activities, students can check out annual events in Raleigh, such as the North Carolina State Fair and Winter fest. Freshmen are not required to live on campus, though about 80 percent choose to. On the sports fields, NC State is known as The Wolfpack and competes in the NCAA Division I Atlantic Coast Conference.

NC State has a variety of academic departments that serve graduate students, too, including a highly ranked engineering school that's particularly well known for its nuclear and biological/agricultural engineering programs; an education program; and the Jenkins Graduate School of Management. Notable NC State graduates include former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Olympic swimmer and gold medalist Cullen Jones.

North Carolina State University is one of the nation's preeminent research institutions, attracting top faculty and students from around the world. Fueled by strong partnerships in both the public and private sectors, NC State's culture of collaboration inspires faculty and students to confront society's toughest challenges. For the university's 34,000 students, every day brings new opportunities to put learning into action and to master the skills they need to succeed in life. The result is a vibrant community focused on creating economic, societal and intellectual prosperity. 

NC State is a comprehensive university with 12 colleges representing all major academic disciplines. The university's colleges collectively offer more than 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs through 65 departments. NC State's 2,090-acre campus is located in Raleigh, one of the nation's best markets for college graduates and a city that is consistently recognized for its hospitality, quality of life and family-friendly atmosphere. Raleigh is one of the cornerstones of the state's growing Research Triangle region, home to industry leaders such as NC State partners IBM, Cisco, Glaxo Smith Kline and Lenovo. In fact, NC State's pioneering research park, Centennial Campus, houses more than 60 corporate, government and nonprofit partners, along with more than 70 NC State research and academic units, including the largest academic bio manufacturing education center in the world. 

The new ultramodern James B. Hunt Jr. Library engages students with a wealth of immersive technologies, including a game lab, visualization studio, digital production suites and more than 100 collaborative spaces. The $115 million library, which uses a robotic book retrieval system, received this year's Stanford Prize for Innovation in Research Libraries in recognition of the facility's creative integration of powerful technologies and inspiring design. Because of its leadership in science and technology, NC State has been selected by the United States government to lead some of the nation's most ambitious research collaborations, including a $140 million effort to create the next generation of power electronics, a $60 million institute to advance the science of big data, and a $25 million collaboration to address proliferation of nuclear weapons. 

NC State is the only university in the nation leading two Engineering Research Centers sponsored by the National Science Foundation, one to remake the nation's electrical grid and the other to develop self-powered health monitoring devices using nanotechnology. It's no wonder that NC State graduates have been ranked among the most desired by corporate recruiters. NC State graduates enjoy the highest starting salaries of any public university graduates in the state and also graduate with lower-than-average debt. NC State is consistently ranked as one of the best values in higher education for its combination of high academic standards, generous financial aid and affordable tuition. Service to society is one of NC State's hallmarks.