You've come to an extraordinary place.

Our 800-member student body - half undergraduate and half graduate students - hail from every background and arrive with endlessly interesting and compelling backstories. Two-thirds are from Virginia, one in five identifies as male, and roughly one-third come from minority and underrepresented backgrounds. About one in five is a first-generation college-attendee. All came to UVA, Virginia's only program to be ranked in the nation's top 3%.

Meet our student-scholars and clinicians who call UVA home.

Meet our students.

Meet Christi Lyn, RN to BSN student and oncology nurse.

Meet Maria, PhD student and family nurse practitioner.

Meet Gary, CNS master's student and critical care nurse.

Meet Tiffany, neonatal NP master's student and NICU nurse.

Meet Frankie, Clinical Nurse Leader master's student.

Meet Erika, RN to BSN student.

It's a lofty ambition, but we share UVA's mission to enrich the mind by stimulating and sustaining the spirit of free inquiry.

To what end? To understand the nature of the universe and human existence. We're not kidding: We take our mission that seriously.

An excellent education is based on humanistic approaches that foster critical thinking and awareness of social and cultural diversity. Our faculty regards each student as a unique individual with special talents, needs and goals, and we endeavor to provide an environment that helps students realize their full potential, both personally and professionally.

But UVA School of Nursing truly stands alone in its focus. Like our emphasis on students' regular encounters across professions -- what we call interprofessional education (UVA's Center for Interprofessional Collaborations is solely devoted to it). Our belief that nurses must look like and understand those for whom they care, and when they don't, that they are humble, culturally competent and constantly open-minded (what our IDEA initiative is focused on). And like our purposeful teaching of compassion (the work of our Compassionate Care Initiative), resilience and self-care to promote safety, quality and professional longevity, so we send nurses into the world with their souls intact.

Your experience here ultimately belongs to you; it's what you get to take with you after graduation or on the first day of your new job. And your time here will remain with you always—just ask one of our many alumni.

Once our paths cross, we're family.