New York University

New York University (NYU) is a private research university in

New York City

. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then Secretary of the Treasury

Albert Gallatin

.

In 1832, the initial non-denominational all-male institution began its first classes near

City Hall

based on a curriculum focused on a secular education. The university, in 1833, then moved and has maintained its main campus in

Greenwich Village

surrounding

Washington Square Park

. Since then, the university has added an engineering school in

Brooklyn's

MetroTech Center and graduate schools throughout

Manhattan

. 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. NYU also receives the most applications of any private institution in the United States and admission is considered highly selective.

NYU is organized into 10 undergraduate schools, including the College of Arts & Science, Gallatin School, Steinhardt School, Stern School of Business, Tandon School of Engineering, and the Tisch School of Arts. NYU's 15 graduate schools include the Grossman School of Medicine, School of Law, Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, School of Professional Studies, School of Social Work, and Rory Meyers School of Nursing. The university's internal academic centers include the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Center for Data Science, Center for Neural Science, Clive Davis Institute, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Institute of Fine Arts, and the NYU Langone Health System. NYU is a global university with degree-granting campuses at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai, and academic centers in

Accra

,

Berlin

,

Buenos Aires

, Florence, London,

Los Angeles

,

Madrid

, Paris,

Prague

,

Sydney

,

Tel Aviv

, and Washington, D.C.

Past and present faculty and alumni include 38 Nobel Laureates, 8 Turing Award winners, 5 Fields Medalists, 31 MacArthur Fellows, 26 Pulitzer Prize winners, 3 heads of state, a

U.S. Supreme Court justice

, 5 U.S. governors, 4 mayors of New York City, 12 U.S. Senators, 58 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, two Federal Reserve Chairmen, 38 Academy Award winners, 30

Emmy Award

winners, 25 Tony Award winners, 12 Grammy Award winners, 17

billionaire

s, and seven Olympic medalists.

History

Albert Gallatin

, 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." 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

merchant

s,

banker

s, and traders. Albert Gallatin was elected as its 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 inception 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, pp. 531–532 NYU was created non-denominational, unlike many American colleges at the time. American Chemical Society was founded in 1876 at NYU.

Soon after its founding, it became one of the nation's largest universities, with an enrollment of 9,300 in 1917. The university purchased a campus at University Heights in the Bronx because of overcrowding on the old campus. NYU also had a desire to follow New York City's development further uptown. NYU's move to the Bronx occurred in 1894, spearheaded by the efforts of Chancellor Henry Mitchell MacCracken. The University Heights campus was far more spacious than its predecessor was. As a result, most of the university's operations, along with the undergraduate 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. In 1914, Washington Square College was founded as the downtown undergraduate college of NYU. 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.

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

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. Feeling the pressures of imminent bankruptcy, NYU President James McNaughton Hester negotiated the sale of the University Heights campus to the City University of New York, which occurred in 1973. In 1973, the New York University School of Engineering and Science merged into Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 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

, NYU launched a billion-dollar campaign that was spent almost entirely on updating facilities. The campaign was set to complete in 15 years, but ended up being completed in 10.

In 1991, L. Jay Oliva was inaugurated the 14th president of the university. Following his inauguration, he moved to form the League of World Universities, an international organization consisting of rectors and presidents from urban universities across six continents. The league and its 47 representatives gather every two years to discuss global issues in

education

.

In 2003, President John Sexton launched a $2.5 billion campaign for funds to be spent especially on faculty and financial aid resources. Under Sexton's leadership, NYU also began its radical transformation into a global university.

In 2009, the university responded to a series of interviews in ''

The New York Times

'' that showed a pattern of labor abuses at its fledgling Abu Dhabi location, creating a statement of labor values for Abu Dhabi campus workers. A 2014 follow-up article found that while some conditions had improved, contractors for the university were still frequently subjecting their workers to third-world labor conditions. The article documented that these conditions included confiscation of worker passports, forced overtime, recruitment fees and cockroach-filled dorms where workers had to sleep under beds. According to the article, workers who attempted to protest the NYU contractors' conditions were promptly arrested. Reports also claimed that those arrested by police were later abused at the police station. Many workers who were not local were then deported to their home countries. The university quickly responded to the reports with an apology to the workers. Though the campus construction costs were entirely funded by the Abu Dhabi government, as will be the operational costs and any future expansions, in 2015, NYU additionally compensated thousands of migrant workers on its Abu Dhabi complex.

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. This has also caused the acceptance rate to drop significantly, with a record-low acceptance rate of 15% in 2020. 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.

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.

University logo

The university logo, the upheld

torch

, is derived from the

Statue of Liberty

, signifying NYU's service to New York City. The torch is depicted on both the NYU seal and the more abstract NYU logo, designed in 1965 by renowned graphic designer Tom Geismar of the branding and design firm Chermayeff & Geismar. There are at least two versions of the possible origin of the university color, violet. Some believe that it may have been chosen because 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

Washington Square

and

Greenwich Village

have been hubs of cultural life in New York City since the early 19th century. Much of this culture has intersected with NYU at various points in its history.

Artist

s of the Hudson River School, the United States' first prominent school of painters, settled around Washington Square. 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.

In the 1870s, sculptors

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

and

Daniel Chester French

lived and worked near the Square. By the 1920s, Washington Square Park was nationally recognized as a focal point for artistic and moral rebellion. As such, the Washington Square campus became more diverse and bustled with urban energy, contributing to academic change at NYU. Famed residents of this time include

Eugene O'Neill

,

John Sloan

, and

Maurice Prendergast

. In the 1930s, the abstract expressionists

Jackson Pollock

and Willem de Kooning, and the realists Edward Hopper and Thomas Hart Benton had studios around Washington Square. In the 1960s the area became one of the centers of the beat and folk generation, when

Allen Ginsberg

and

Bob Dylan

settled there. This led to tension with the university, which at the time was in the midst of an aggressive facilities expansion phase. In 1975, the university opened The Grey Art Gallery at 100 Washington Square East, housing the NYU art collection and featuring museum quality exhibitions.

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. Started in 2001, this campaign was the university's largest in its history, in which they planned to "raise $1 million per day for scholarships and financial aid, faculty building, new academic initiatives, and enhancing NYU's physical facilities." The campaign included a $50 million gift from the Tisch family (after which one building and the art school are named) and a $60 million gift from six

trustee