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The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. The Twin Cities campus comprises locations in Minneapolis and Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, approximately apart. The Twin Cities campus is the oldest and largest in the University of Minnesota system and has the ninth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,376 students at the start of the 2021–22 academic year. It is the flagship institution of the University of Minnesota System, and is organized into 19 colleges, schools, and other major academic units.

The Minnesota Territorial Legislature drafted a charter for the U of M as a territorial university in 1851, seven years before Minnesota became a state. Today, the university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". Minnesota is a member of the Association of American Universities and is ranked 20th in research activity, with $1.04 billion in research and development expenditures in the fiscal year 2020. In 2001, the University of Minnesota was included in a list of Public Ivy universities, which includes publicly funded universities thought to provide a quality of education comparable to that of the Ivy League.

University of Minnesota faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 26 Nobel Prizes and three Pulitzer Prizes. Among its alumni, the university counts 25 Rhodes Scholars, seven Marshall Scholars, 21 Truman Scholars, and 134 Fulbright recipients. The university also has Guggenheim Fellowship, Carnegie Fellowship, and MacArthur Fellowship holders, as well as past and present graduates and faculty belonging to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and National Academy of Engineering. Notable University of Minnesota alumni include two vice presidents of the United States, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, and Bob Dylan, who received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers compete in 21 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division I Big Ten Conference and have won 29 national championships. As of 2021, Minnesota's current and former students have won a total of 76 Olympic medals.

History

The University of Minnesota was founded in Minneapolis in 1851 as a college preparatory school, seven years prior to Minnesota's statehood. It struggled in its early years and relied on donations to stay open from donors including South Carolina Governor William Aiken Jr.

In 1867, the university received land grant status through the Morrill Act of 1862.

An 1876 donation from flour miller John S. Pillsbury is generally credited with saving the school. Since then, Pillsbury has become known as "The Father of the University". Pillsbury Hall is named in his honor.

Academics

Organization and administration

The university is organized into 19 colleges, schools, and other major academic units:

Institutes and centers

Six university-wide interdisciplinary centers and institutes work across collegiate lines:
* Center for Cognitive Sciences
* Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences
* Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota
* Institute for Engineering in Medicine
* Institute for Translational Neuroscience
* Institute on the Environment
* Minnesota Population Center

Rankings

Global

In 2021, the University of Minnesota was ranked as the 40th best university in the world by the '' Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)'', which assesses academic and research performance. The same 2021 ranking by subject placed the University of Minnesota's ecology program as 2nd best in the world, management program as 10th best, biotechnology program as 11th best, mechanical engineering and medical technology programs as 14th best, law and psychology programs as 19th best, and veterinary sciences program as 20th best. The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) for 2021-22 ranked Minnesota 46th in the world and 26th in the United States. The 2021 Nature Index, which assesses the institutions that dominate high-quality research output, ranked Minnesota 53rd in the world based on research publication data from 2020. '' U.S. News & World Report'' ranked Minnesota as the 47th best global university for 2021. The 2022 ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'' placed Minnesota 86th worldwide, based primarily on teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook.

National

In 2021, Minnesota was ranked as the 24th best university in the United States by the '' Academic Ranking of World Universities'', and 20th in the United States in ''Washington Monthlys 2021 National University Rankings. Minnesota's undergraduate program was ranked 68th among national universities by '' U.S. News & World Report'' for 2022, and 26th in the nation among public colleges and universities. The same publication ranked Minnesota's graduate ''Carlson School of Management'' as 28th in the nation among business schools, and 6th in the nation for its information systems graduate program. Other graduate schools ranked highly by ''U.S. News & World Report'' for 2022 include the ''University of Minnesota Law School'' at 22nd, the ''University of Minnesota Medical School'', which was 4th for family medicine and 5th for primary care, the '' University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy'', which ranked 3rd, the ''Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs'', which ranked 9th, the '' University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development'', which ranked 10th for education psychology and special education, and the '' University of Minnesota School of Public Health'', which ranked 10th.

In 2020, the Center for Measuring University Performance ranked Minnesota 16th in the nation in terms of total research, 30th in endowment assets, 24th in annual giving, 28th in the number of ''National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine'' memberships, 9th in its number of faculty awards, and 14th in its number of '' National Merit Scholars''.
Minnesota is listed as a "Public Ivy" in 2001 Greenes' Guides ''The Public Ivies: America's Flagship Public Universities''.

Admissions

Undergraduate

The 2022 annual ranking of '' U.S. News & World Report'' categorizes Minnesota as "more selective". For the Class of 2025 (enrolled fall 2021), Minnesota received 35,905 applications and accepted 26,295 (73.2%). Of those accepted, 6,883 enrolled, a yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend the university) of 26.2%. Minnesota's freshman retention rate is 92%, with 84% going on to graduate within six years.

The university started test-optional admissions with the Fall 2021 incoming class and has extended this through Fall 2025. Of the 41% of enrolled freshmen in 2021 who submitted ACT scores; the middle 50 percent Composite score was between 27 and 32. Of the 7% of the incoming freshman class who submitted SAT scores; the middle 50 percent Composite scores were 1320-1470.

The University of Minnesota is a college sponsor of the National Merit Scholarship Program and sponsored 97 Merit Scholarship awards in 2020. In the 2020–2021 academic year, 112 freshman students were National Merit Scholars.

Discoveries and innovation

Inventions by University of Minnesota students and faculty have ranged from food science to health technologies. Most of the public research funding in Minnesota is funneled to the University of Minnesota as a result of long-standing advocacy by the university itself.

The university developed Gopher, a precursor to the World Wide Web which used hyperlinks to connect documents across computers on the internet. However, the version produced by CERN was favored by the public since it was freely distributed and could more easily handle multimedia webpages. The university also houses the Charles Babbage Institute, a research and archive center specializing in computer history. The department has strong roots in the early days of supercomputing with Seymour Cray of Cray supercomputers.

The university also became a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2007 and has led data analysis projects searching for gravitational waves – the existence of which was confirmed by scientists in February 2016.

Discoveries and innovation by faculty or (former) students include:
*Puffed rice – Alexander P. Anderson performed work leading to the discovery of "puffed rice", a starting point for a new breakfast cereal later advertised as "Food Shot From Guns".
*Transistorized cardiac pacemaker – Earl Bakken founded Medtronic, where he developed the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker in 1957.
*Green Revolution – Norman Borlaug was an American agronomist who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution. Borlaug, often called "the father of the Green Revolution", is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. Borlaug was awarded multiple honors for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal.
* ATP synthase – Paul D. Boyer elucidated the enzymatic mechanism for synthesis of the cellular "energy currency", adenosine triphosphate (ATP), leading to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1997.
* Point-contact transistor – Walter Houser Brattain and John Bardeen, later joined by William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. For their invention, the trio was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.
*Infusion pump – Henry Buchwald invented the world's first infusion port, peritoneovenous shunts, and specialty vascular catheters. He also invented the first implantable infusion pump, a precursor to implantable infusion pumps in use throughout the world today.
*Photosynthesis – Melvin Calvin discovered the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham; for this, he won the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
*Ecology – Raymond Lindeman revolutionized ecology, primarily through his 1942 paper "Trophic Dynamic Aspect of Ecology", which described how energy and nutrients cycled through ecosystems.
* Supercomputer – Seymour Cray