Columbia University

Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York (Columbia University) is a private Ivy
League research university in New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher
learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the countrys
nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. Today the University operates
four global centers overseas in Amman, Jordan; Beijing, China; Paris, France; and Mumbai,
India.
The University was founded in 1754 as Kings College by royal charter of George II of
Great Britain. After the American Revolutionary War Kings College briefly became a state
entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. The University now operates under a 1787
charter that places the institution under a private board of trustees, and in 1896 it was further
renamed Columbia University. That same year, the Universitys campus was moved from
Madison Avenue to its current location in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan,
where it occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres (0.13 km2). The University encompasses
twenty schools and is affiliated with numerous institutions, including Teachers College, Barnard
College, and the Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available
through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America as well as the Juilliard School.
Columbia annually administers the Pulitzer Prize and is one of the founding members of
the Association of American Universities. Alumni and affiliates of the University have gone on
to win more Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes, and Academy Awards than any other academic
institution in the world. Other notable students and affiliates of the University include five
Founding Fathers of the United States; four United States presidents; nine Justices of the
Supreme Court of the United States; and 20 foreign Heads of State.
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University