Brown University  is a private, Ivy League, Research University in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1764 as “The College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges established before the –  American Revolution.

At its foundation, Brown was the first college in the United States to accept students regardless of their religious affiliation. Its engineering program, established in 1847, was the first in what is now known as the Ivy League. Brown’s New Curriculum—sometimes referred to in education theory as the Brown Curriculum—was adopted by faculty vote in 1969 after a period of student lobbying; the New Curriculum eliminated mandatory “general education” distribution requirements, made students “the architects of their own syllabus,” and allowed them to take any course for a grade of satisfactory or unrecorded no-credit. In
1971, Brown’s coordinate women’s institution, Pembroke College, was fully merged into the university.

Undergraduate admissions  are among the most selective in the country, with an acceptance rate of 9.5 percent for the class of 2019, according to the university. The University comprises The College, the Graduate School, Alpert Medical School, the School of Engineering, the School of Public Health, and the School of Professional Studies (which includes the IE Brown Executive MBA program). Brown’s international programs are organized through the Watson Institute for International Studies, and is academically affiliated with the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Rhode Island School of Design. The Brown/RISD Dual Degree Program, offered in conjunction with the Rhode Island School of Design, is a five-year course that awards degrees from both institutions.

Brown’s main campus is located in the College Hill Historic District in the city of
Providence, the third largest city in New England. The University’s neighbourhood is a federally listed architectural district with a dense concentration of ancient buildings. On the western edge of the campus, Benefit Street contains “one of the finest cohesive collections of restored seventeenth- and eighteenth-century architecture in the United States”.

The  University of California, Davis  (also referred to as UCD, UC Davis, or Davis), is a public research university and one of the 10 campuses of the University of California system. Located in Davis, California, just west of Sacramento, it encompasses 7,309 acres of land, making it the largest UC campus in terms of land ownership. UC Davis also has the third- largest enrolment in the UC System after UCLA and UC Berkeley.

The Carnegie Foundation classifies UC Davis as a comprehensive doctoral research university with a medical program, and very high research activity. The UC Davis faculty includes 23 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 25 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 17 members of the American Law Institute, 14 members of the Institute of Medicine, and 14 members of the National Academy of Engineering. Among other honours, university faculty, alumni, and researchers have won the Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, National Medal of Science, and Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering.

The university has expanded over the past century to include graduate and professional programs in medicine (which includes the UC Davis Medical Centre), law, veterinary medicine, education, nursing, and business management, in addition to 90 research programs offered by UC Davis Graduate Studies. The UC Davis’s School of Veterinary Medicine is the largest in the United States and is ranked first in the nation.

The 2016 U.S. News & World Report college rankings named UC Davis as tied for the 11th best public university and tied for 41st overall in the U.S. UC Davis is one of 62 members in the Association of American Universities.

The UC Davis Aggies athletic teams compete in the NCAA Division I level, primarily in the Big West Conference as well as the Big Sky Conference (football only) and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. In its first year of full Division I status, 11 UC Davis teams qualified for NCAA post-season competition.

The university has 104 undergraduate majors and 96 graduate programs. It has a Department of Viticulture and Enology (concerning the scientific study of grape-growing and winemaking) that has been and continues to be responsible for significant advancements in winemaking utilized by many Californian wineries. The campus claims to be noted for its top-rated Agricultural and Resource Economics programs and the large Department of Animal Science through which students can study at the university’s own on-campus dairy, meat-processing plant, equestrian facility, and experimental farm. Students of Environmental Horticulture and other botanical sciences have many acres of campus farmland and the University of California, Davis, Arboretum at their disposal.

The Department of Applied Science was founded and formerly chaired by physicist Edward Teller. The arts are also studied extensively on campus with subjects such as studio art, design, music, theatre and dance. The Design Department at UC Davis is the only comprehensive academic design unit of the University of California system. There is also the Mondavi Centre for the Performing Arts which features artists from all over the globe. The Academic Ranking of World Universities placed UC Davis 35th nationally and 57th globally for 2015. In its 2015-16 rankings, Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Ranked it tied for 44th in the world. The QS World University Rankings ranked it tied for 85th globally in 2015, with Agriculture & Forestry ranked No. 1 in the world.