New York University

New York University (NYU) is a private, nonsectarian American research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is located at Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan. Founded in 1831, NYU is one of the largest private nonprofit institutions of American higher education.


NYU was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1950.NYU counts 36 Nobel Prize winners, three Abel Prize winners, 10 National Medal of Science recipients, 16 Pulitzer Prize winners,over 30 Academy Award winners, four Putnam Competition winners, Russ Prize, Gordon Prize, and Draper Prize winners, Turing Award winners, and Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winners among its faculty and alumni. NYU also has MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowship holders as well as National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering members among its past and present graduates and faculty.

NYU is organized into more than 20 schools, colleges, and institutes, located in six centers throughout Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn, as well as more than a dozen other sites across the world, with plans for further expansion. According to the Institute of International Education, NYU sends more students to study abroad than any other US college or university, and the College Board reports more online searches by international students for "NYU" than for any other university.

Albert Gallatin, Secretary of Treasury under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, declared his intention to establish "in this immense and fast-growing city ... a system of rational and practical education fitting for all and graciously opened to all". A three-day long "literary and scientific convention" held in City Hall in 1830 and attended by over 100 delegates debated the terms of a plan for a new university. These New Yorkers believed the city needed a university designed for young men who would be admitted based upon merit rather than birthright, status, or social class. On April 18, 1831, an institution was established, with the support of a group of prominent New York City residents from the city's landed class of merchants, bankers, and traders. Albert Gallatin was elected as the institution's first president. On April 21, 1831, the new institution received its charter and was incorporated as the University of the City of New York by the New York State Legislature; older documents often refer to it by that name. The university has been popularly known as New York University since its beginning and was officially renamed New York University in 1896. In 1832, NYU held its first classes in rented rooms of four-story Clinton Hall, situated near City Hall. In 1835, the School of Law, NYU's first professional school, was established. Although the impetus to found a new school was partly a reaction by evangelical Presbyterians to what they perceived as the Episcopalianism of Columbia College, NYU was created non-denominational, unlike many American colleges at the time.