ABOUT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Columbia University (Columbia; officially Columbia University in the City of New York), established in 1754, is a private Ivy Leagueresearch university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Columbia contains the oldest college in the state of New York and is the fifth chartered institution of higher learning in the United States, making it one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence. It was established as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain and renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolutionary War. The college has produced numerous distinguished alumni. It has additionally been amongst the most selective colleges in the United States since its founding. With an undergraduate acceptance rate of 5.8%, it currently stands as the third most selective college in the United States and second most selective college in the Ivy League.

A 1787 charter placed the institution under a private board of trustees before it was renamed Columbia University in 1896 when the campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights occupying 32 acres (13 ha) of land.Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree. The university administers annually the Pulitzer Prize.

The university is organized into twenty schools, including three undergraduate schools, Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of General Studies, as well as graduate schools such as Columbia Law School, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, Teachers College, and Columbia Business School. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción and Nairobi. It has affiliations with several other institutions nearby, including List College, Barnard College and Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, University College London,Sciences Po, City University of Hong Kong and the Juilliard School.