University of Cambridge

 From this place, we gain enlightenment
 and precious knowledge

The University of Cambridge (informally Cambridge University, or simply Cambridge) is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world, and the seventh-oldest globally. In post-nominals the university's name is abbreviated as Cantab, a shortened form of Cantabrigiensis (an adjective derived from Cantabrigia, the Latinised form of Cambridge).
The university grew out of an association of scholars in the city of Cambridge that was formed in 1209, early records suggest, by scholars leaving Oxford after a dispute with townsfolk. The two "ancient universities" have many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to cultural and practical associations as a historic part of British society, they have a long history of rivalry with each other.
Academically Cambridge ranks as one of the top universities in the world: first in the world in both the 2010 and 2011 QS World University Rankings, sixth in the world in the 2010–2011 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and fifth in the world (and first in Europe) in the 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities. Cambridge regularly contends with Oxford for first place in UK league tables. In the most recently published ranking of UK universities, published by The Guardian newspaper, Cambridge was ranked first.

Clare College (left) and part of King's College,
including King's College Chapel (centre),
built between 1441 and 1515.

Graduates of the University have won a total of 61 Nobel Prizes, the most of any university in the world. In 2009, the marketing consultancy World Brand Lab rated Cambridge University as the 50th most influential brand in the world, and the 4th most influential university brand, behind only Harvard, MIT and Stanford University, while in 2011, the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings ranked Cambridge as the 3rd most reputable university in the world, after Harvard and MIT. Cambridge is a member of the Coimbra Group, the G5, the International Alliance of Research Universities, the League of European Research Universities and the Russell Group of research-led British universities. It forms part of the 'Golden Triangle' of British universities.

www.wikipedia.com

Birmingham City University

"Do what you are doing;
 attend to your business"

Birmingham City University (abbrev. as BCU; and previously Birmingham Polytechnic and the University of Central England in Birmingham) is a British university in the city of Birmingham, England. It is the second largest of three universities in the city, the other two being the Aston University and University of Birmingham. Established in 1971, it was designated as a polytechnic until 1992, when it gained university status.
The university has eight campuses serving six faculties, and offers courses in art and design, business, the built environment, computing, education, engineering, English, healthcare, law, the performing arts, social sciences, and technology. A proposed £150m campus in the city centre of Birmingham, part of the Eastside development of a new technology and learning quarter, is to open in 2013. The university is a designated Skillset Media Academy, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for health and social care, and a member of the million+ group of New Universities.

Baker building, City North Campus,
 showing the new name and logo

Birmingham City University is the West Midlands' largest provider of higher education for undergraduate study, and its portfolio of part-time courses is among the biggest in the UK. Roughly half of the university's full-time students are from the West Midlands, and a large percentage of these are from ethnic minorities. The university runs access and foundation programmes through an international network of associated universities and further education colleges, and has the highest intake of foreign students in the Birmingham area.

Australian National University

Bob Hawke,
23rd Prime Minister of Australia,
1983-1991.

Kevin Rudd,
26th Prime Minister of Australia,
2007-2010.

The Australian National University (ANU) is a public teaching and research university located in Australia capital, Canberra. Following the Second World War, then Prime Minister Ben Chifley and the Minister for Post-war Reconstruction J.J. Dedman introduced a bill to the Parliament of Australia to establish the university, with the aim conducting and promoting research in Australia. The bill was passed on 1 August 1946 and its provisions came into effect on 7 February 1947. As such, the ANU is the only Australian university to have been established by an act of the Federal Parliament, as other Australian universities were established by State or Territory parliaments. After its establishment, the University conducted research and provided only postgraduate education. In 1960, the former Canberra University College, which had operated since 1930, was amalgamated into the ANU as the School of General Studies to provide for the education of undergraduate students. As of 2010, the university had a financial endowment of A$1.2371 billion.
As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students. Two Australian Prime Ministers attended the university, and the ANU includes six Nobel laureates among its staff and alumni.

Chifley Library

The Australian National University consistently ranks among the top universities in Australia and is one of the top universities in the world in a number of fields. ANU is a member of several university alliances and cooperative networks, including the Group of Eight, the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy and the International Alliance of Research Universities.

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The Universitas Indonesia

Motto: veritas, probitas, iustitia

Prof. Dr. der Soz. Gumilar Rusliwa Somantri (Rector UI)
awarded Doctor Honoris Causa in Political Science
from Chonbuk National University (CBNU).

The Universitas Indonesia, (in Indonesia abbreviated as UI) is a state, comprehensive world class university located in Depok, West Java and Salemba, Jakarta, Indonesia. Universitas Indonesia is the oldest tertiary-level educational institution in Indonesia (known as the Dutch East Indies at the time that UI was established). Universitas Indonesia (UI) is a modern, comprehensive, open-minded, multi-culture, and humanism campus that covers wide arrays of scientific disciplines.
UI simultaneously strives to be one of the leading research universities and the most outstanding academic institution in the world. As a world class research university, UI seeks to achieve the highest level of distinction in the discovery, developing and diffusion of advance knowledge regionally and globally. One of its flagship programs is the Universitas Indonesia GreenMetric World University Ranking 4 to show the extent to which the university worldwide is ‘green’ and become the role model of a sustainable society sustainable society.
UI is regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in Indonesia, together with Bandung Institute of Technology and Gadjah Mada University.

University of Pennsylvania

Arms of the University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania (commonly referred to as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States and is one of the eight members of the Ivy League. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and is considered the first university in the United States, with both undergraduate and graduate studies. It is also one of the Colonial Colleges. Incorporated as The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn is one of 14 founding members of the Association of American Universities.
Benjamin Franklin, Penn's founder, advocated an educational program that focused as much on practical education for commerce and public service as on the classics and theology. Penn was one of the first academic institutions to follow a multidisciplinary model pioneered by several European universities, concentrating multiple "faculties" (e.g., theology, classics, medicine) into one institution. It was also home to many other educational innovations. The first school of medicine in North America (Perelman School of Medicine, 1765), the first collegiate business school (Wharton, 1881) and the first student union (Houston Hall, 1896), were all born at Penn.
Penn offers a broad range of academic departments, an extensive research enterprise and a number of community outreach and public service programs. It is particularly well known for its medical school, dental school, school of business, law school, communications school, nursing school, veterinary school, its social sciences and humanities programs, as well as its biomedical teaching and research capabilities. Its undergraduate programs are also among the most selective in the country (12.26% acceptance rate). One of Penn's most well known academic qualities is its emphasis on interdisciplinary education, which it promotes through numerous joint degree programs, research centers and professorships, a unified campus, and the ability for students to take classes from any of Penn's schools (the "One University Policy").
All of Penn's schools, alone or jointly, exhibit very high research activity. Penn is consistently included among the top five research universities in the US,[8] and among the top research universities in the world, both in terms of quality and quantity of research. In Fiscal year 2011, Penn will top the Ivy League in academic research spending with a $814 million budget, involving some 4,000 faculty, 1,100 postdoctoral fellows and 5,400 support staff/graduate assistants. As one of the most active and prolific research institutions, Penn is associated with several important innovations and discoveries in many fields of science and the humanities. Among them are the first general purpose electronic computer (ENIAC), the Rubella and Hepatitis B vaccines, Retin-A, cognitive therapy, conjoint analysis and others.

Quad in the Fall, facing Ware College House

Penn's academic and research programs are led by a large and highly productive faculty. In the last ten years alone 11 Penn faculty members or graduates have won a Nobel Prize. Over its long history the university has also produced a large volume of distinguished alumni. These include 10 heads of state (including a U.S. President), 3 United States Supreme Court justices, and supreme court justices of other states, 8 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 9 signers of the Constitution, and 18 billionaires.

The University of Oxford

Keble College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford

The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University, or simply Oxford) is a university in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although the exact date of its foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back as the 11th century. The University grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. In post-nominals, the University of Oxford was historically abbreviated as Oxon. (from the Latin Oxoniensis), although Oxf is nowadays used in official university publications.
After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge, where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two ancient English universities have many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to their cultural and practical associations, as a historic part of British society, they have a long history of rivalry with each other.
Most undergraduate teaching at Oxford is organised around weekly tutorials at self-governing colleges and halls, supported by lectures and laboratory classes organised by University faculties and departments. League tables consistently list Oxford as one of the UK's best universities; the university regularly contends with Cambridge for first place in the tables. Oxford consistently ranks in the world's top 10. For more than a century, it has served as the home of the Rhodes Scholarship, which brings students from a number of countries to study at Oxford as postgraduates or for a second bachelor's degree.
Oxford is a member of the Russell Group of research-led British universities, the Coimbra Group, the G5, the League of European Research Universities, and the International Alliance of Research Universities. It is also a core member of the Europaeum and forms part of the 'Golden Triangle' of British universities.

www.wikipedia.com

The University of California

Source:
http://identity.berkeley.edu/dl_index.html

The University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as UC Berkeley, Cal Berkeley, Berkeley, or simply Cal), is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA. Berkeley is the most consistently well ranked university in the world overall as shown by a meta-analysis of subject/departmental data over the last sixteen years from the United States National Research Council, the US News & World Report, and Times Higher Education. Berkeley has the highest number of distinguished graduate programs ranked in the top 10 in their fields by the United States National Research Council. Among other honors, University faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 68 Nobel Prizes, 9 Wolf Prizes, 7 Fields Medals, 15 Turing Awards, 45 MacArthur Fellowships, 20 Academy Awards, and 11 Pulitzer Prizes. To date, UC Berkeley and its researchers are associated with 6 chemical elements of the periodic table (Californium, Seaborgium, Berkelium, Einsteinium, Fermium, Lawrencium) and Berkeley Lab has discovered 16 chemical elements in total – more than any other university in the world.
UC Berkeley is the flagship institution of the University of California. The university occupies 6,651 acres (2,692 ha) with the central campus resting on approximately 200 acres (81 ha) in the San Francisco Bay Area. Berkeley offers approximately 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California (UC), Berkeley was the result of an 1868 merger of the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in Oakland. Since its founding, Berkeley has been charged with providing both "classical" and "practical" education for the state's people.
Berkeley co-manages three United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. Berkeley was a founding member of the Association of American Universities. Berkeley physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb in the world, which he personally headquartered at Los Alamos, New Mexico, during World War II.
Berkeley student-athletes have won over 100 Olympic medals. Known as the California Golden Bears (often abbreviated as "Cal Bears" or just "Cal"), the athletic teams are members of both the Pacific-12 Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in the NCAA. Cal athletes have won national titles in many sports, including football, men's and women's swimming, men's basketball, baseball, men's gymnastics, softball, water polo, rugby, and crew. The official colors of the university and its athletic teams are Yale Blue and California Gold.