New York University

As the cultural mecca of the US, New York City naturally contains many fine colleges and universities. One of the very best is New York University (NYU), located in Washington Square in Lower Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. While NYU is a quintessentially urban school lacking a conventional, pastoral college campus setting, its site is immediately recognizable thanks to Washington Square Arch, which is a replica of the ancient Roman Arch of Titus and very similar in appearance to Paris’s celebrated Arc de Triomphe (though only half its size).

One of the principal founders of NYU was Albert Gallatin, president of the National Bank of New York, former US diplomat, and Secretary of the Treasury under Thomas Jefferson. At the center of Gallatin’s vision for NYU was that the school would accept students from a wider variety of social and family backgrounds, thus making a college education available to young men who showed outstanding academic or personal merit.

This was a novel idea at the time, but one that NYU continues to take seriously today. For example, its entering undergraduate class each year represents nearly 90 foreign countries, in addition to almost all of the American states. NYU also has 12 mini-campuses, or “global academic centers,” located in cities around the world:

• Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates)
• Accra (Ghana)
• Berlin (Germany)
• Buenos Aires (Argentina)
• Florence (Italy)
• London (United Kingdom)
• Madrid (Spain)
• Paris (France)
• Prague (Czech Republic)
• Shanghai (China)
• Sydney (Australia)
• Tel Aviv (Israel)

Through this extensive network, more NYU students participate in study-abroad programs than those of any other American university.

Some 37 winners of the Nobel Prize are connected to NYU, including, notably,:

• Severo Ochoa—chemistry
• Eric Kandel—physiology or medicine
• Wassily Leontief—economics

In addition, NYU can boast eight Turing Award winners, including:

• Martin Hellman
• Judea Pearl
• Michael Rabin
• Robert Tarjan

as well as five Fields Medalists, including Akshay Venkatesh.

Finally, notable NYU alumni from other walks of life include:

• Philosophers, Thomas Nagel, Peter Singer, & David Chalmers
• Film directors, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, & Tom Ford
• Singer, Neil Diamond
• Actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, James Franco, & Timothée Chalamet
• Former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani