Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri. William Greenleaf Eliot and Wayman Crow founded it in 1853. It moved to its present Danforth Campus, which borders Forest Park and the suburbs of Clayton and University City, in time to host facilities for the 1904 World's Fair. A separate Medical Campus sits in the Central West End, where the university shares a medical center with BJC HealthCare.

The university has eight schools: Arts & Sciences, the McKelvey School of Engineering, Olin Business School, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, the School of Law, the School of Medicine, the Brown School of social work and public health, and the School of Continuing & Professional Studies. Medicine and the biomedical sciences are its largest research enterprise. Graduate students work with the McDonnell Genome Institute, the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Siteman Cancer Center, Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital.

Total enrollment is about 16,000, split roughly evenly between undergraduates and graduate or professional students. International students are concentrated in graduate programs, particularly engineering, business and the sciences. About 25 Nobel laureates have been associated with the university as faculty or alumni, including physicist Arthur Holly Compton, who later served as chancellor. Alumni include playwright Tennessee Williams and filmmaker Harold Ramis.

Graduate study spans PhD programs, including the umbrella Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, and professional degrees such as the MSW and MPH at the Brown School, the Olin MBA and specialized master's degrees, the JD, and clinical doctorates in physical and occupational therapy. The calendar is semester-based. Doctoral students are typically fully funded with a stipend, and the Chancellor's Graduate Fellowship supports selected students. St. Louis offers a relatively low cost of living, with MetroLink light rail linking both campuses.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Washington University in St. Louis lists 157 graduate programs across 51 subjects: 75 master's programs and 73 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, health & medical sciences and finance & financial economics. Washington University in St. Louis holds rank 36 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.