Duke University

Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Its roots go back to 1838 and a schoolhouse in Randolph County that became Trinity College. Trinity moved to Durham in 1892 and was renamed Duke University in 1924, after tobacco and power industrialist James B. Duke established The Duke Endowment. Its landholdings of roughly 8,600 acres include the Gothic West Campus, the Georgian East Campus and the 7,000-acre Duke Forest, and the university anchors one corner of North Carolina's Research Triangle.

Duke's schools include Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, the Pratt School of Engineering, the Fuqua School of Business, the School of Law, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, the Divinity School, the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Sanford School of Public Policy and The Graduate School. Research and clinical centers include Duke University Hospital, the Duke Cancer Institute, the Duke Clinical Research Institute, the Duke Lemur Center and the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort. Abroad, Duke partners in Duke Kunshan University in China and Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.

Duke enrolls about 17,000 students, and more than half are graduate and professional students. International students are concentrated in engineering, environment, policy and business programs. Chemists Robert Lefkowitz and Paul Modrich received Nobel Prizes for work done at Duke. Alumni include Apple chief executive Tim Cook, philanthropist Melinda French Gates and President Richard Nixon.

Professional master's degrees are a large part of graduate enrollment, including the Master of Environmental Management, Master of Public Policy, Master of Engineering Management and Fuqua's MBA and MMS. PhD programs are typically funded with tuition and a stipend for five years. The calendar is semester-based. Durham has a moderate cost of living, and Chapel Hill and Raleigh are within a short drive.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Duke University lists 147 graduate programs across 49 subjects: 67 master's programs and 70 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, law and public health. Duke University holds rank 22 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.