Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech's New River Battalion has won the DoD ROTC Partnership Excellence Award — the top ranking out of all 274 Army ROTC programs — two years in a row (2023 and 2024), making it the first program ever to accomplish that. The cadre explicitly approach training as if they are preparing cadets for combat, and the program sent more cadets to summer training opportunities and badge-producing schools than any other ROTC program in the country in recent years, with 22 completing Air Assault and others finishing Airborne and Jungle Operations courses. Virginia Tech is a Senior Military College with a full Corps of Cadets, so participation carries real daily commitment, but unlike VMI or The Citadel, civilian students coexist on campus and ROTC cadets can have something closer to a traditional college experience. Branch selection spans the full combat arms and support spectrum — Infantry, Armor, Aviation, Cyber, Intelligence, and Logistics all appear in commissioning data — and the program's top national ranking translates directly to competitive OML scores for branch negotiation. Cadets who want the intensity of a military environment with the academic resources of a major research university consistently rank this as the best of both worlds.