City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private Ivy League research university located in Upper Manhattan, New York City, and is among the world's most selective, prestigious institutions of higher learning.

Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in New York state, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. It was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. After the American Revolutionary War, King's 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 university's campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights, where it occupies 32 acres (13 ha).

The university encompasses twenty schools and is affiliated with numerous institutions, including Teachers College (which is Columbia University's Graduate School of Education), Barnard College, and the Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Sciences Po Paris, and the Juilliard School. The University also operates Columbia Global Centers overseas in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago and Nairobi.

According to the Center for Measuring University Performance, administered by Arizona State University, Columbia is ranked first (tied with MIT, Stanford University and Penn) in the United States. The ranking takes into account total research, federal research, endowment assets, annual giving, National Academy members, faculty awards, doctorates granted, postdoctoral appointees, and undergraduate SAT/ACT range.

Columbia annually administers the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally, 101 Nobel Prize laureates have been affiliated with the university as students, faculty, or staff. 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. Notable alumni and former students of the university and its predecessor, King's College, include five Founding Fathers of the United States; nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court; 43 Nobel Prize laureates; 20 living billionaires; 29 Academy Award winners; and 29 heads of state, including three United States Presidents.