University of Maryland, College Park

The University of Maryland, College Park is Maryland's flagship public land-grant university, in College Park a few miles northeast of Washington, D.C. It opened in 1856 as the Maryland Agricultural College, later joined the University System of Maryland, and grew into a research campus of more than 1,200 acres. Land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant missions still shape work in agriculture, engineering, and the earth sciences.

Twelve colleges and schools include the A. James Clark School of Engineering, the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, the Robert H. Smith School of Business, the College of Information Studies, the School of Public Policy, and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Graduate students also use the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security and partnerships with NASA Goddard, NOAA, and other federal laboratories in the capital region. Medicine is based at the University of Maryland, Baltimore rather than on the College Park campus.

About 40,000 students enroll, of whom roughly a quarter are graduate students. International students come from more than 100 countries. The instructional and research faculty numbers several thousand. Alumni include Google co-founder Sergey Brin, puppeteer and filmmaker Jim Henson, and journalist Connie Chung.

Graduate study covers academic master's, professional master's, and PhD programs that mix coursework with dissertation supervision on a U.S. semester calendar. Doctoral funding typically comes from assistantships, fellowships, and federal research grants. Students live in a college town on the Washington Metro Green Line, with national laboratories and federal agencies a short commute away.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, University of Maryland, College Park lists 228 graduate programs across 55 subjects: 128 master's programs and 96 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in education, public health and health & medical sciences. University of Maryland, College Park holds rank 64 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.