Top Universities

Overview ABOUT Established in 1856, the University of Chicago is a private research university based in the urban center of Chicago, the third most populous city in the United States. Outside of the Ivy League, Chicago is one of America’s top universities, and holds top-ten positions in various national and international rankings. Beyond the arts and sciences, Chicago has a glowing reputation for its professional schools, including the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Booth School of Business, and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies. University of Chicago alumni are responsible for the development of many academic disciplines, such as sociology, economics, law, and literary criticism.  The college’s crest sees a phoenix rising from the ashes, a reference to the fire, foreclosure, and demolition of the Old University of Chicago campus, with the current University of Chicago emerging triumphantly in its place in 1890. The old university was founded th

Overview Ranked 8th in the world in the QS World University Rankings® 2019, Imperial College London is a one-of-a-kind institution in the UK, focusing solely on science, engineering, medicine and business. Imperial offers an education that is research-led, exposing youto real world challenges with no easy answers, teaching that opens everythingup to question and opportunities to work across multi-cultural, multi-nationalteams. Imperial is based in South Kensington in London, in an area known as ‘Albertopolis’, Prince Albert and Sir Henry Cole’s 19th century vision for an area where science and the arts would come together. As a result, Imperial’s neighbors include a number of world leading cultural organizations including the Science, Natural History and Victoria and Albert museums; the Royal Colleges of Art and Music; the English National Ballet; and the Royal Albert Hall, where all of their students also graduate. There is plenty of green space too, i

Overview ABOUT ETH Zurich is one of the world's leading universities in science and technology and is known for its cutting-edge research and innovation. It was established in 1855 as the Federal Polytechnic School, and a century and a half later can count over 20 Nobel Prize Laureates as alumni, including the great Albert Einstein himself. The university, commonly known as Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, has 16 departments that conduct academic interdisciplinary research in subjects ranging from architecture and technology to chemistry and physics. Education at ETH Zurich is more about theory than its practical application, and most degree programs contain mathematical training. For undergraduates the main teaching language is German, while most master's programs and doctoral studies are in English. Located in Zurich, Switzerland's largest city, ETH Zurich is largely based on a modern main campus built on a hill in the outskirts o

Overview ABOUT Located in the center of the ancient city of Cambridge, 50 miles north of London, the University of Cambridge is a collegiate public research institution that serves more than 18,000 students from all corners of the globe. The university consists of numerous listed buildings and is divided into 31 autonomous colleges, with many of the older ones situated on the famous river Cam. Applications are made directly to the individual colleges, rather than to the university overall. You can live and are often taught within your college, receiving small group teaching sessions known as college supervisions. Six academic schools – Arts and Humanities, Biological Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Humanities and Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Technology – are spread across the university’s colleges, housing roughly 150 faculties and other institutions. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge’s 800-year history makes it the fourth-oldest unive

Overview ABOUT The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world, and is actually so ancient that its founding date is unknown – though it is thought that teaching took place there as early as the 11th century. It’s located in and around the medieval city center of Oxford, dubbed “the dreaming city of spires” by the 19th century poet Matthew Arnold, and comprises 44 colleges and halls as well as the largest library system in the UK. There are 22,000 students at Oxford in total, around half of whom are undergraduates, while 40 per cent are international students. A quarter of the city of Oxford’s residents are students, giving the city the youngest population in the UK. The University of Oxford does not have a main campus, its buildings and facilities instead being scattered around the medieval city center. Its colleges each have a distinctive character and traditions often dating back centuries. Colleges are self-governing

Overview ABOUT The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is a world-renowned science and engineering research and education institution, located in Pasadena, California, around 11 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Caltech has a high research output as well as many high-quality facilities such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (owned by NASA), the Caltech Seismological Laboratory, and the International Observatory Network.  It’s among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States primarily devoted to teaching technical arts and applied sciences, and its fiercely competitive admissions process ensures only a small number of the most gifted students are admitted. The university was founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, with the mission “to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education”. It became a major hub of US scientific research in the early 20th cent

Overview ABOUT Established in 1636, Harvard is the oldest higher education institution in the United States, and is widely regarded in terms of its influence, reputation, and academic pedigree as a leading university in not just the US but also the world. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, three miles north-west of Boston, Harvard’s 209-acre campus houses 10 degree-granting schools in addition to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, two theaters, and five museums. It is also home to the largest academic library system in the world, with 18 million volumes, 180,000 serial titles, an estimated 400 million manuscript items and 10 million photographs. Like most of the United States’ pre-Civil War colleges, Harvard was founded to train clergy, but Harvard’s curriculum and student body quickly secularized, and in the 20th century admissions policy was opened up to bring in a more diverse pool of applicants. Now, a total of 21,000 students attend the un

Overview ABOUT Located 35 miles south of San Francisco and 20 miles north of San Jose, Stanford University is in the heart of Northern California’s dynamic Silicon Valley, home to Yahoo, Google, Hewlett-Packard, and many other cutting-edge tech companies that were founded by and continue to be led by Stanford alumni and faculty. Nicknamed the “billionaire factory”, it is said that if Stanford graduates formed their own country it would boast one of the world’s largest ten economies. Covering 8,180 acres, Stanford has one of the largest university campuses in the US, with 18 interdisciplinary research institutes and seven schools: the Graduate School of Business; School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences; Graduate School of Education; School of Engineering; School of Humanities and Sciences; Law School; and School of Medicine. Stanford University was founded in 1885 by California senator Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane, to “promote the public wel

Overview ABOUT “Mind and Hand” is the thought-provoking motto of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, known also as MIT. This motto enigmatically encapsulates this famous institution’s mission to advance knowledge in science, technology and areas of scholarship that can help to make the world a better place. At its founding in 1861, MIT was initially a small community of problem-solvers and science lovers eager to bring their knowledge to bear on the world. Today, MIT has evolved into an educational behemoth, with some 1,000 faculty members and more than 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students. MIT is now an independent, coeducational, privately endowed university organized into five schools (architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; science). Yet the principle of educational innovation remains at the core of MIT’s educational philosophy. MIT researchers are at the forefront of developments in artif