Research University

Harvard was established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony to train clergy and grew into the most recognized university on earth. It ...

Chartered in the Connecticut colony, Yale moved to New Haven in 1716 and built the collegiate gothic campus that defines its image...

Princeton began as the College of New Jersey and moved to the small town that later took its name. It emphasizes undergraduates un...

Founded as King's College by royal charter, Columbia adopted its current name after independence. Its core curriculum, teaching pr...

Penn grew from a charity school Benjamin Franklin championed into a practical-minded Ivy. Its medical school, opened 1765, was the...

Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White founded a university where any person could find instruction in any study, combining Ivy tra...

Founded with John D. Rockefeller's money and William Rainey Harper's ambition, Chicago rebuilt American higher education around re...

Named for its benefactor, a Baltimore merchant, Johns Hopkins adopted the Humboldtian ideal of teaching through research. Its hosp...

Leland and Jane Stanford founded the university in memory of their son, willing it an 8,000 acre farm that became the valley's anc...

Berkeley opened as California's first land-grant university and grew into the strongest public research campus in the world by com...

Founded in Detroit two decades before Michigan statehood, the university moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 and set the model for the grea...

Jefferson designed UVA around a lawn and rotunda rather than a church, making it the first US secular university and an architectu...

Beginning as a rural Methodist school, Duke was rebuilt in Durham with Washington Duke's tobacco fortune and named for his son Jam...

Chartered in 1789 and open to students by 1795, UNC claims the title of oldest public university in America by first class. Its ol...

William Marsh Rice's murder-for-fortune story nearly derailed the institute bearing his name, but it opened in 1912 anyway, tuitio...

Albert Gallatin and town fathers founded NYU to serve the merchant class excluded from Columbia. Its Washington Square campus abso...

Oxford taught students by 1096 and never stopped, surviving plague, civil war, and eight centuries of politics. Its 39 colleges an...

Cambridge began with scholars fleeing Oxford town-gown violence in 1209 and organized into colleges soon after. Trinity College cl...

UCL was founded as a secular alternative when Oxford and Cambridge required Anglican conformity, earning the nickname Godless Coll...

Founded by the town council with a royal charter, Edinburgh became the Enlightenment's Athens north of the border. David Hume and ...

Queen Elizabeth I chartered Trinity as the sole college of the University of Dublin, a structure that persists with Trinity as its...

Chartered as King's College, the university renamed itself in 1850 and secularized. Banting and Best isolated insulin in 1921 in a...

Founded from fur trader James McGill's bequest, the university rose on the slopes of Mount Royal. Ernest Rutherford, working at Mc...

Melbourne opened during the gold rush with four professors and 16 students, growing into Australia's highest-ranked university on ...

ANU was created by act of parliament in 1946 as Australia's national research institution, unique in being built by the state for ...

Tokyo Imperial University opened in the Meiji era as Japan's first national university, merging government schools of medicine, la...

Founded as Kyoto Imperial University after the capital moved to Tokyo, the university built a culture of independent research. Hid...

Founded as the Imperial University of Peking during reformist 1898, it became Peking University in 1912 and China's premier compre...

NUS began as a straits settlement medical school with 23 students and merged into the national university in 1980. It now tops Asi...

Founded at the request of Count Palatine Rupert I with papal approval, Heidelberg is Germany's oldest university. Its student pris...

Founded in Ingolstadt and moved twice, LMU settled in Munich in 1826 under King Ludwig I. Max Planck studied and later taught near...

Wilhelm von Humboldt's 1810 founding of Berlin University invented the model uniting teaching and research that every modern unive...

Robert de Sorbon's college for poor theology students opened in 1257, giving the Latin Quarter its eternal name. Centuries of revo...

Created by the Revolution to train teachers, ENS Ulm admits a few hundred students yearly through fearsome entrance exams who then...

Founded by papal bull in 1425, Leuven became the Low Countries' first university. Erasmus edited his Greek New Testament here, Ves...

Chartered by Christian I, Copenhagen opened in a bishop's palace and grew across the old city. Niels Bohr founded his institute he...

Founded as the Royal Academy of Turku and moved to Helsinki after the 1827 fire, the university carried Finland's national awakeni...

Founded by Duke Rudolph IV, Vienna is the oldest university in the German-speaking world by continuous operation. Its medical scho...

Founded by Casimir the Great in 1364 and refounded by Jadwiga and Jagiello in 1400, Krakow's university is among Europe's oldest b...

Bologna taught Roman law from the late 11th century and organized into a universitas of students who hired professors, inverting t...

Founded by decree of Elizabeth I at Mikhail Lomonosov's urging, Moscow State became the Russian Empire's and then the Soviet Union...

Established by national law in 1946 from colonial-era colleges, SNU became Korea's uncontested flagship. Its law school and econom...

Founded as an English-medium university under colonial rule, HKU opened with the medical college that graduated Sun Yat-sen in 189...

Beginning as the South African College, UCT received full university status in 1918 on the Groote Schuur estate beneath Table Moun...

Fusion of the old Law Academy and new science faculties created USP in 1934, and it has led Latin American research output since. ...

The Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico opened in 1553, making UNAM's lineage the oldest in North America. Closed in the 19t...

Founded by the Fatimid caliphate alongside its mosque in 970 CE, Al-Azhar taught jurisprudence, grammar, and astronomy centuries b...

Beginning as the Daniel Sieff Research Institute in 1933 under Chaim Weizmann, the institute focuses purely on graduate science, a...

Chartered in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, it took the Brown name in 1804 ...

Eleazar Wheelock obtained a royal charter in 1769 to found the college in Hanover, New Hampshire, with a stated mission to educate...

Founded in 1851 by Methodist leaders including John Evans, Northwestern was named for the old Northwest Territory and sits on the ...

UCLA began in 1919 as the Southern Branch of the University of California and moved to its Westwood campus in 1929, where Royce Ha...

The University of Texas opened in 1883 on forty acres near the state capitol, and its 307-foot Main Building tower still dominates...

King George IV and the Duke of Wellington backed the founding of King's College in 1829 as an Anglican response to the secular Uni...

A papal bull from Nicholas V founded the university in 1451, making it the second oldest in Scotland and the fourth oldest in the ...

Teaching began around 1410, and a papal bull from Benedict XIII in 1413 gave the university its full status, making St Andrews the...

Established by provincial act in 1908, UBC opened its doors in 1915 and moved to its Point Grey peninsula campus in 1925, after st...

Established by an act of the New South Wales parliament in 1850, Sydney is the oldest university in Australia. Its Gothic Revival ...

Fudan was founded in 1905 by the Jesuit-educated scholar Ma Xiangbo, its name drawn from a classical line about the light of sun a...

William of Orange founded Leiden in 1575, traditionally as a reward to the city for withstanding the Spanish siege of 1574. It is ...

Founded in 1477 under a papal bull from Sixtus IV, Uppsala is the oldest university in the Nordic countries. Carl Linnaeus built m...

Alfonso IX of Leon founded Salamanca in 1218, making it the oldest university in Spain still in operation and one of the oldest in...

The Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru was founded in 1909 with support from the industrialist Jamsetji Tata, the Maharaja o...

Founded in 1848, the year Wisconsin became a state, the university spreads along the shore of Lake Mendota in Madison. The Wiscons...