University of Nottingham

The University of Nottingham is a public research university based in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881 and granted a Royal Charter in 1948.

Nottingham's main campus, University Park, is situated on the outskirts of the City of Nottingham, with a number of smaller campuses and a teaching hospital (Queen's Medical Centre) located elsewhere in Nottinghamshire. Outside the United Kingdom, Nottingham has campuses in Semenyih, Malaysia and Ningbo, China. Nottingham is organised into five constituent faculties, within which there are more than 50 departments, institutes and research centres. Nottingham has about 44,000 students and 9,000 staff and had a total income of £520 million in 2012/13, of which £100 million was from research grants and contracts.[6]

Several of its subjects have been consistently ranked in the top ten, including Economics, Law, and Pharmacy.[7] It is ranked 5th in England in terms of the number of students and 15th for the proportion of students who achieved AAB+ at A-level.[8] The university is one of 12 "elite" institutions that accommodates the top achieving students in England.[9] A 2014 survey suggested it is the most targeted university by the UK's top employers.[10] In 2012 Nottingham was ranked 13th in the world in terms of the number of alumni listed among CEOs of the Fortune Global 500.[11] It is also ranked 2nd (joint with Oxford) in the 2012 Summer Olympics table of British medal winners.[12] In the 2011 and 2014 GreenMetric World University Rankings, Nottingham was the world's most sustainable campus.[13][14]

It is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Virgo Consortium, the European University Association, the Russell Group, Universities UK, Universitas 21 and participates in the Sutton Trust Summer School programme.

Imperial College London

Imperial College London is a public research university in the United Kingdom.[5] Its royal patron and founder, Prince Albert, envisioned an area for public education composed of the Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Science Museum, Royal Albert Hall and the Imperial Institute.[6][7] The Imperial Institute was opened by his wife, Queen Victoria, who laid the first brick.[8] Continuing their parent's and grandparent's vision, Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of York recently opened the Imperial College Business School.[9] The university has grown through mergers including with St Mary's Hospital Medical School, Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School, the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and the National Heart and Lung Institute. A former constituent college of the University of London, Imperial became independent during its centennial celebration.[10]

Imperial is organised into four faculties of science, engineering, medicine and business. The main campus is located in South Kensington. The university is a major biomedical research centre and formed the first academic health science centre in the United Kingdom.[11] Imperial is a member of the Russell Group, G5, Association of Commonwealth Universities, League of European Research Universities, and the "Golden Triangle" of British universities.

Imperial is consistently included among the top universities in the world.[12][13][14][15] According to The New York Times, recruiters consider its students among the 10 most valued graduates in the world.[16][17] Imperial faculty and alumni include 15 Nobel laureates, 2 Fields Medalists, 70 Fellows of the Royal Society, 82 Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering and 78 Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences.[18]

University of London

The University of London (informally referred to as London University) is a collegiate research university located in London, England, consisting of 18 constituent colleges, 10 research institutes and a number of central bodies.[3]

London is the second largest university by number of full-time students in the United Kingdom, with around 135,000 campus-based students and over 50,000 distance learning students in the University of London International Programmes. The university was established by Royal Charter in 1836, which brought together in federation London University (now University College London) and King's College (now King's College London).

For most practical purposes, ranging from admissions to funding, the constituent colleges operate on a semi-independent basis, with some recently obtaining the power to award their own degrees whilst remaining in the federal university. The nine largest colleges of the university are King's College London; University College London; Birkbeck; Goldsmiths; the London Business School; Queen Mary; Royal Holloway; SOAS; and the London School of Economics and Political Science. The specialist colleges of the university include Heythrop College, specialising in philosophy and theology, and St George's, specialising in medicine. Imperial College London was formerly a member before it left the University of London in 2007. On the 16th July 2015 it was announced that City University London would join the federal University of London, becoming one of its constituent colleges from August 2016.[4]

Many notable individuals have passed through the University of London, either as staff or students, including at least 4 monarchs, 52 presidents or prime ministers, 74 Nobel laureates, 6 Grammy winners, 2 Oscar winners and 3 Olympic gold medalists.

In post-nominals, the University of London is commonly abbreviated as Lond. or, more rarely, Londin., from the Latin Universitas Londiniensis after their degree abbreviations.

Queen Mary University of London

Queen Mary University of London (officially abbreviated to QMUL, informally known as QM) is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. With roots dating back to the founding of the London Hospital Medical College in 1785, Queen Mary College was admitted to the University of London in 1915, named after Mary of Teck, Queen of the United Kingdom. In 1989 Queen Mary College merged with Westfield College to form Queen Mary and Westfield College. In 1995, Queen Mary and Westfield College merged with two distinguished medical colleges, St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, established in 1843, and the London Hospital Medical College, England's first medical school, founded in 1785. It is recognised as one of the most prestigious Universities in Europe.

Queen Mary is frequently ranked among the top universities in the UK, Europe and is among the top 100 universities in the world. It was recently ranked among the top 5 universities in London.[3] There are six Nobel Laureates amongst Queen Mary's alumni and current and former staff.[4]

Queen Mary's main campus is located in the Mile End area of the East End of London, with other campuses in Holborn, Smithfield and Whitechapel. It has around 17,000 full-time students and 4,000 staff[5] and an annual turnover of £350 million, of which around £100 million is from research grants and contracts. Queen Mary is organised into three faculties – the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Faculty of Science and Engineering and Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry – within which there are 21 academic departments and institutes. It is one of the largest colleges of the University of London.

Queen Mary is a member of the Russell Group of leading British research universities, the Association of Commonwealth Universities and Universities UK. Queen Mary is a major centre for medical teaching and research and is part of UCL Partners, the world's largest academic health science centre. It has a strategic partnership with the University of Warwick, including research collaboration and joint teaching of English, history and computer science undergraduates. Queen Mary also collaborates with Royal Holloway, University of London to run programmes at the University of London Institute in Paris.

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University or simply Oxford) is a collegiate research university located in Oxford, England. While having no known date of foundation, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096,[1] making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest surviving university.[1][6] It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris.[1] After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled northeast to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge.[7] The two "ancient universities" are frequently jointly referred to as "Oxbridge".

The university is made up of a variety of institutions, including 38 constituent colleges and a full range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions.[8] All the colleges are self-governing institutions as part of the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities.[9] Being a city university, it does not have a main campus; instead, all the buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre.

Most undergraduate teaching at Oxford is organised around weekly tutorials at the self-governing colleges and halls, supported by classes, lectures and laboratory work provided by university faculties and departments. Oxford is the home of several notable scholarships, including the Clarendon Scholarship which was launched in 2001[10] and the Rhodes Scholarship which has brought graduate students to study at the university for more than a century.[11] The university operates the largest university press in the world[12] and the largest academic library system in the United Kingdom.[13] Oxford has educated many notable alumni, including 27 Nobel laureates, 26 British prime ministers (most recently David Cameron, the incumbent) and many foreign heads of state.[14]

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan (U-M, UM, UMich, or U of M), frequently referred to simply as Michigan, is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Originally, founded in 1817 in Detroit as the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, 20 years before the Michigan Territory officially became a state, the University of Michigan is the state's oldest university. The university moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 onto 40 acres (16 ha) of what is now known as Central Campus. Since its establishment in Ann Arbor, the university campus has expanded to include more than 584 major buildings with a combined area of more than 34 million gross square feet (781 acres or 3.16 km²), and has two satellite campuses located in Flint and Dearborn. The University was one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities.

Considered one of the foremost research universities in the United States,[7] the university has very high research activity and its comprehensive graduate program offers doctoral degrees in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) as well as professional degrees in business, medicine, law, pharmacy, nursing, social work and dentistry. Michigan's body of living alumni (as of 2012) comprises more than 500,000. Besides academic life, Michigan's athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are collectively known as the Wolverines. They are members of the Big Ten Conference.

Stanford University

Stanford University (officially Leland Stanford Junior University) is a private research university in Stanford, California, and one of the world's most prestigious institutions,[10][11][12][13] with the top position in numerous rankings and measures in the United States.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20] For the third year in a row, Stanford is the most selective college in the United States,[21][22] and in 2015 Stanford achieved the highest admissions yield as well.[23][24]

Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford, former governor of and U.S. Senator from California and leading railroad tycoon, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was opened on October 1, 1891[2][3] as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Tuition was free until 1920.[25][26] The university struggled financially after Leland Stanford's 1893 death and after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.[27] Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley. By 1970, Stanford was home to a linear accelerator, and was one of the original four ARPANET nodes (precursor to the Internet).[28]

Stanford is located in northern Silicon Valley near Palo Alto, California. The University's academic departments are organized into seven schools, with several other holdings, such as laboratories and nature reserves, located outside the main campus.[7][29] Its 8,180-acre (3,310 ha)[29] campus is one of the largest in the United States.[8] The University is also one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.[30]

Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the University is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pacific-12 Conference. It has gained 107 NCAA team championships, the second-most for a university, 465 individual championships, the most in Division I,[31] and has won the NACDA Directors' Cup, recognizing the university with the best overall athletic team achievement, every year since 1994-1995.[32]

Stanford faculty and alumni have founded many companies including Google, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, Sun Microsystems, Instagram and Yahoo!, and companies founded by Stanford alumni generate more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, equivalent to the 10th-largest economy in the world.[33] Fifty-nine Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the University,[34] and it is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires and 17 astronauts. Stanford has produced a total of 18 Turing Award laureates.[note 2] It is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress.[53][