New York University

New York University (NYU) is a private, nonsectarian American research university based in New York City. Founded in 1831, NYU is one of the largest private non-profit institutions of American higher education. University rankings compiled in 2015 by U.S. News and World Report, Times Higher Education and the Academic Ranking of World Universities all ranked NYU among the 34 most reputable universities in the world. NYU is organized into more than twenty schools, colleges, and institutes, located in six centers throughout Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn. NYU's main campus is located at Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan with institutes and centers on the Upper East Side, academic buildings and dorms down on Wall Street, and the Brooklyn campus located at MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn. The University also established NYU Abu Dhabi, NYU Shanghai and maintains 11 other Global Academic Centers in Accra, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Florence, London, Madrid, Paris, Prague, Sydney, Tel Aviv and Washington, D.C.

NYU was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1950. NYU counts thirty-six Nobel Prize winners, four Abel Prize winners, three Turing Award winners, over thirty National Medals for Science, Technology and Innovation, Arts and Humanities recipients, over thirty Pulitzer Prize winners, over thirty Academy Award winners, as well as several Russ Prize, Gordon Prize, Draper Prize and Fields Medal winners, and dozens of Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winners among its faculty and alumni. NYU also has many MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowship holders as well as hundreds of National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and American Academy of Arts and Sciences members, and a plethora of members of the United States Congress and heads of state of countries all over the world, among its past and present graduates and faculty. NYU has the most Oscar winners of any university. The alumni of NYU are among the wealthiest in the world, and include seventeen living billionaires.

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 nee