Columbia University

Columbia University  is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. Columbia is the oldest college in New York State and the fifth chartered institution of higher learning in the country, making it one of nine colonial colleges founded before the Declaration of Independence. After the revolutionary war King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. 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 Morning side Heights occupying land of 32 acres  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.he university is organized into twenty schools, including Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of General Studies. 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 Teachers College, Barnard College, and Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Sciences Po Paris and the Julliard School.Columbia annually administers the Pulitzer Prize.Notable alumni and former students including those from King's College include five Founding Fathers of the United States; nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court living billionaires .Academy Award winners and 29 heads of state, including three United States Presidents.Additionally, some 100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, faculty or staff.

                        Discussions regarding the founding of a college in the Province of New York began as early as 1704 at which time Colonel Lewis Morris wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the missionary arm of the Church of England, persuading the society that New York City was an ideal community in which to establish a college however, not until the founding of Princeton University across the Hudson River in New Jersey did the City of New York seriously consider founding a college.In 1746 an act was passed by the general assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. In 1751 the assembly appointed a commission of ten New York residents, seven of whom were members of the Church of England, to direct the funds accrued by the state lottery towards the foundation of a college.The majority of Columbia's graduate and undergraduate studies are conducted in Morning side Heights on Seth Low's late-19th century vision of a university campus where all disciplines could be taught in one location. The campus was designed along Beaux-Arts principles by architects Micki Mead, and White. Columbia's main campus occupies more than six city blocks or 32 acres in Morning side Heights, New York City, a neighborhood that contains a number of academic institutions. The university owns over 7,800 apartments in Morning side Heights, housing faculty, graduate students, and staff. Almost two dozen undergraduate dormitories purpose-built or converted are located on campus or in Morning side Heights. Columbia University has an extensive underground tunnel system more than a century old, with the oldest portions predating the present campus. Some of these remain accessible to the public, while others have been cordoned off.