Cornell University (Ithaca, NY, USA)

Cornell University is a sprawling city of scholarship that seems almost out of place amid the rolling upstate New York countryside.

Typically, schools numbering in the tens of thousands are integrated into much larger cities. Thus, in many ways Cornell has both the air of a quaint college nestled in the woods and the endless opportunity characteristic of urban centers.

But Cornell is not limited by its beautiful upstate campus. It also runs one of the nation’s leading medical schools in New York City. Moreover, the university is among the most active schools in seeking out international connections. In 2001, it started the first American medical school outside the states, in Qatar, and continues to develop strong ties with China, India, and Singapore.

Cornell is building itself into a transnational hub of intellectual inquiry. It has also developed multiple interdisciplinary research centers in nanotechnology, biotechnology, genomics, and supercomputing.

The university was also the first to build entire colleges for hotel administration, labor relations, and veterinary medicine.