New York University

Coordinates: 40°43′48″N 73°59′42″W / 40.73000°N 73.99500°W / 40.73000; -73.99500
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New York University
NewspaperWashington Square News
ColorsViolet and white[11]
   
NicknameViolets
Sporting affiliations
NCAA Division IIIUAA
MascotBobcat
Websitewww.nyu.edu

New York University (NYU) is a

MetroTech Center and graduate schools throughout Manhattan.[17] NYU has become the largest private university in the United States by enrollment, with a total of 51,848 enrolled students, including 26,733 undergraduate students and 25,115 graduate students in 2019.[18][8] It is one of the most applied-to schools in the country and admissions are considered selective.[19][20][21]

NYU's main campus in

NYU is a global university system

NYU Shanghai in China, and academic learning centers in Accra, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Florence, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Paris, Prague, Sydney, Tel Aviv, and Washington, D.C.[25][26][27] Past and present faculty and alumni include 39 Nobel Laureates, 8 Turing Award winners, 5 Fields Medalists, 31 MacArthur Fellows, 26 Pulitzer Prize winners, 3 heads of state, 5 U.S. governors, 12 U.S. senators, 58 members of the U.S. House of Representatives
.

History

Albert Gallatin (1761–1849) by Gilbert Stuart

Secretary of the 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 and graciously opened to all."[1] 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 or social class.

On April 18, 1831, the institution that would become NYU was established with the support of a group of prominent New York City residents from the city's

Presbyterians to what they perceived as the Episcopalianism of Columbia College,[29] NYU was created non-denominational, unlike many American colleges at the time.[12] The American Chemical Society
was founded in 1876 at NYU.

NYU Building in Washington Square, 1850
The University Heights campus, now home to Bronx Community College

Soon after its founding, it became one of the nation's largest universities, with an enrollment of 9,300 in 1917.

College of Arts and Science and School of Engineering, were housed there. NYU's administrative operations were moved to the new campus, but the graduate schools of the university remained at Washington Square.[31] In 1914, Washington Square College was founded as the downtown undergraduate college of NYU.[citation needed] In 1935, NYU opened the "Nassau College-Hofstra Memorial of New York University at Hempstead, Long Island." This extension would later become a fully independent Hofstra University.[32]

In 1950, NYU was elected to the Association of American Universities, a nonprofit organization of leading public and private research universities.[33][34]

Financial crisis gripped the New York City government in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the troubles spread to the city's institutions, including NYU.

Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn,[36] which eventually merged back into NYU in 2014, forming the present Tandon School of Engineering. After the sale of the Bronx campus, University College merged with Washington Square College. In the 1980s, under the leadership of President John Brademas,[37] NYU launched a billion-dollar campaign that was led by Naomi B. Levine[38] and was spent almost entirely on updating facilities.[39] The campaign was set to complete in 15 years, but ended up being completed in 10.[40]

In 1991,

universities across six continents. The league and its 47 representatives gather every two years to discuss global issues in education.[42]

In 2003, President John Sexton launched a $2.5 billion campaign for funds to be spent especially on faculty and financial aid resources.[43] Under Sexton's leadership, NYU also began its transformation into a global university, including the opening of a campus in Abu Dhabi in 2010.

Mortgage loans issued to some administrators and faculty by the university were criticized following published reports of August 2013, detailing terms of the loans, including that the school had issued some which approached zero percent interest rates, and some that were partially forgiven.[44] Uniquely, among universities,[45] the school had also issued multi-million-dollar loans for luxury vacation homes. President Sexton would step down at the end of his term in 2016, in the wake of a vote of no confidence in March 2013,[46] closely followed by controversy over having received a vacation home loan from NYU.[44]

In August 2018, the New York University Grossman School of Medicine announced it would be offering full-tuition scholarships to all current and future students in its MD program regardless of need or merit, making it the only top-10 medical school in the United States to do so.[47]

In Spring 2022, President Andrew D. Hamilton announced that the 2023 academic year would be his last, and that he would be returning to research.[48] He will be succeeded by Linda G. Mills, the university's first female president.[49]

Enrollment

From 2007 to 2018, NYU experienced a 114% increase in applications to its university system, increasing from around 35,000 applicants to more than 100,000 in 2020.[20] This has also caused the acceptance rate to drop significantly, with a record-low acceptance rate of 8% in 2023.[50] In parallel to NYU's expansion in the early 1900s, the university similarly expanded vigorously in the early 2000s, becoming the largest private university in the United States with a combined undergraduate/graduate enrollment of over 59,000 students as of 2018.

The university logo, the upheld

violets are said to have grown abundantly in Washington Square and around the buttresses of the Old University Building. Others argue that the color may have been adopted because the violet was the flower associated with Athens, the center of learning in ancient Greece
.

Cultural setting

Samuel F.B. Morse, a noted artist who also pioneered the telegraph and created the Morse Code, served as the first chair of Painting and Sculpture. He and Daniel Huntington were early tenants of the Old University Building in the mid-19th century. (The university rented out studio space and residential apartments within the "academic" building.) As a result, they had notable interaction with the cultural and academic life of the university.[35]

In the 1870s, sculptors

Grey Art Gallery at 100 Washington Square East, housing the NYU art collection and featuring museum quality exhibitions.[53][54]

Budget and fundraising

NYU has successfully completed a seven-year, $2.5 billion campaign, surpassing expectations by raising more than $3 billion over the seven-year period.

School of Social Work, which will be renamed as a result.[58] This is the largest donation ever to a school of social work in the United States.[59]

The 2007–2008 academic year was the most successful fundraising year to date for NYU, with the school raising $698 million in only the first 11 months of the year, representing a 70% increase in donations from the prior year.[60] The university also recently announced plans for NYU's Call to Action, a new initiative to ask alumni and donors to support financial aid for students at NYU.[61]

The university has announced a 25-year strategic development plan, scheduled to coincide with its bicentennial in 2031. Included in the "NYU 200" plans are increasing resident and academic space, hiring additional faculty, and involving the New York City community in a transparent planning process. Additionally, NYU hopes to make their buildings more environmentally friendly, which will be facilitated by an evaluation of all campus spaces.[62] As a part of this plan, NYU purchased 118 million kilowatt-hours of wind power during the 2006–2007 academic year – the largest purchase of wind power by any university in the country and any institution in New York City.[63] For 2007, the university expanded its purchase of wind power to 132 million kilowatt-hours.[64] As a result, the EPA ranked NYU as one of the greenest colleges in the country in its annual College & University Green Power Challenge.[65]

NYU consistently ranks as one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, raising $506.4 million in 2015 and $648 million in 2016.[66] NYU is also the 19th wealthiest university in America with $5.3 billion in cash and investments in fiscal year 2014.[67]

Campus

NYU's

Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) to the west. The core of NYU consists of buildings that surround Washington Square Park.[70][71][72]
In addition to its New York campus, NYU has 49 additional buildings overseas located throughout two 'portal' campuses and 12 Global Academic Centers.

Washington Square campus

Washington Square Park, with its gateway arch, is surrounded largely by NYU buildings and plays an integral role in the university's campus life.

Since the late 1970s, the central part of NYU has been its Washington Square campus in the heart of Greenwich Village. The Washington Square Arch is an unofficial symbol of NYU. Until 2007, NYU had held its commencement ceremonies in Washington Square Park, but because of renovations to Washington Square moved the 2008 ceremonies to the original Yankee Stadium and all subsequent ones to the current Yankee Stadium.[73]

The

Student Health Center. Other nearby university buildings and complexes of note include 5 Washington Place, which houses NYU's distinguished Department of Philosophy, 7 East 12th Street, which serves as the main building for the School of Professional Studies, the Brown Building, which was the location of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire before its acquisition by NYU, as well as Washington Square Village and University Village, two housing complexes for faculty members and graduate students. Undergraduate residence halls
in the immediate surroundings of Washington Square include Goddard Hall, Lipton Hall, and Weinstein Hall, while those that are slightly farther but still nearby include Brittany Hall and Rubin Hall.

In the 1990s, NYU became a "two square" university by building a second community around

Union Square, in close proximity to Washington Square. NYU's Union Square community primarily consists of the priority residence halls of Carlyle Court, Palladium Residence Hall, Alumni Hall, Coral Tower, Thirteenth Street Hall, University Hall, Third North Residence Hall, and Founders Hall.[70]

On its Washington Square campus, NYU operates theaters and performance facilities that are often used by the Tisch School of the Arts as well as the university's

Skirball Center for Performing Arts (850 seats) at 566 LaGuardia Place, just south of Washington Square South, and the Eisner-Lubin Auditorium (560 seats) in the Kimmel Center. Notably, the Skirball Center has hosted important speeches on foreign policy by John Kerry[citation needed] and Al Gore.[76] The Skirball Center is the largest performing arts facility south of 42nd Street.[77][78]

NYU also has international houses meant to foster the study of particular cultures and languages on its Washington Square campus, including the Deutsches Haus,

King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, the Hagop Kevorkian Center, an Africa House, and a China House.[79] Most of these international houses are located on Washington Mews
, a private street north of Washington Square Park.

The closest New York City Subway stations servicing the Washington Square campus are Eighth Street–New York University and West Fourth Street–Washington Square. In addition, NYU runs its own shuttle service, University Transportation Services, linking the Washington Square campus to other university locations and major transit hubs.[80] The nearest major highway is the West Side Highway (NY 9A) to the west. The campus is located less than 1 mile (1.6 km) from the Holland Tunnel, and 4 miles (6.4 km) from the Brooklyn Bridge.

Gould Plaza