About The University of Maryland
The University of Maryland is the flagship university of the 11-campus University System of Maryland. With around 25,000 undergraduate and 10,000 graduate students, the University of Maryland, College Park, is one of the largest universities on the east coast of the United States.
The university was founded in 1856 as Maryland Agricultural College, but later became a comprehensive university and now is one of the leading public research universities in the United States. Over the last two decades the university has experienced dramatic changes, as one of the fastest rising universities in the nation. In 2019 the Shanghai Jiao Tong Top 500 ranked the University of Maryland among the top 50 universities in the world, and the top 30 in the United States. SAT scores for entering freshman are now among the top handful of public universities in the nation. The university has over 30 programs ranked in the top 10 nationally, and research funding to the university has risen to over $500 million per year. These changes are the result of an aggressive vision for the university (UM Strategic Plan) and the university's close proximity to the nation's capital.
The University of Maryland benefits from close partnerships with many of the world-famous research institutes located close to the campus, such as NASA, NIST and the National Institutes of Health. The university is developing important new partnerships at M-Square, a large new research park adjacent to the campus. This includes the Center for Advanced Study of Language, a federally-funded research center that at full strength will employ more than 100 linguists and other language-related professionals.