The University of York is a research-intensive plate glass university located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the campus university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, covering a wide range of subjects.
In 2012 York joined the Russell Group in recognition of the institution's world-leading research and outstanding teaching.In the 2014 Research Assessment Exercise, York was also named as the 14th best research institution in the United Kingdom. Along with the LSE, York is the only university in the UK to have displaced the University of Oxford to second place in league tables, second only to the University of Cambridge. The university also places among the top 20 in the country, top 50 universities in Europe, and ranked 120th in the world, according to the 2015 QS World University Rankings. York is described as a "genuinely world class" institution by the Times and Sunday Times. York was the Sunday Times university of the year in 2003 and Times Higher Education university of the year in 2010.
The University attracts a student body with a wide range of backgrounds (with over 41,000 part-time and full-time student applications in 2010/11), including a large number of international students, and a relatively high number of state school students in comparison to other well-ranked universities according to The Times Good University Guide.
Situated to the south-east of the city of York, the university campus is approximately 200 acres (0.81 km2) in size, incorporating the York Science Park and the National Science Learning Centre. Its wildlife, campus lakes and greenery are prominent, and the institution also occupies buildings in the city of York. In May 2007 the university was granted permission to build an extension to its main campus, on arable land just east of the nearby village of Heslington. The second campus, known as Heslington East, opened in 2009 and now hosts three colleges and three departments as well as conference spaces, sports village and a business start-up 'incubator'.
York is a collegiate university and every student is allocated to one of the university's nine colleges. The ninth college was founded in 2014 and was named Constantine after the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, who was proclaimed Augustus in York in 306 AD. There are plans to build a tenth college in the near future.
