Emory University, USA

Founded in 1836 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, Emory combines a liberal arts undergrad college with professional schools offering postgrad and doctoral programmes

Sited in the southern city of Atlanta (pop. 5.5 million), which hosts the headquarters of nine Fortune 500 companies including Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, Emory University is ranked among America’s top 20 varsities by the US News & World Report.

Founded in 1836 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, Emory combines a liberal arts college for undergraduates with professional schools offering postgrad programmes. This combination of a traditional liberal arts college with the resources, opportunities, and broad curriculum of a research university is Emory’s distinguishing feature. Emory College offers a broad, rigorous liberal arts curriculum to 5,500 undergrad students while Emory University’s seven professional schools offer Master’s and doctoral programmes in law, medicine, business, public health and theology to 5,865 postgraduate students. The average class size at Emory is 18 students, and the student-faculty ratio is 9:1.

“As a destination for path-breaking researchers, renowned teachers, superb students, and dedicated, competent staff, Emory University strives to help its community members fulfill their highest aspirations. Our vision is to discover truth, share it, and ignite in others a passion for its pursuit. Emory is a strong intellectual community that seeks excellence, not to compete with other institutions, but to contribute to the shaping of a better world,” says Jim Wagner, president of Emory University.

Emory’s growth and transformation into one of America’s most prestigious universities is closely linked with its location in Atlanta, the hub of business and industry in south-east USA, and in particular with the fortunes of the Coca-Cola Co. It was Asa Candler, founder of Coca-Cola, who wrote the “million-dollar letter” to offer seed money and a land grant for a new campus in Atlanta in 1915. The soft drink company president’s brother was Methodist bishop Warren Candler, an Emory alumnus. “The Coca-Cola Company has given rise to family fortunes for the Candlers, the Woodruffs, the Goizuetas and others who have been extraordi-narily generous towards Emory. The philanthropy of these and other donors has enabled Emory’s growth and empowered its ambition to become one of the nation’s leading univer-sities. It’s unofficially considered poor school spirit to drink other soda brands on campus,” says a university spokesperson.

Currently Emory’s endowment corpus exceeds $4 billion and ranks as the eighth largest of all American universities.

Atlanta. The administrative capital of the state of Georgia, Atlanta is the cultural, technological, financial, and healthcare centre of south-eastern USA.  Hosting over 700 of the top 1,000 Fortune listed companies, including Coca-Cola and The Home Depot, Atlanta offers Emory students great corporate internships and research opportunities. It also hosts a large number of museums ranging from history to fine arts, natural history, and beverages. Moreover the city boasts 45 universities, colleges, and institutions of higher learning and the nation’s third largest college student enrolment, ranking sixth nationwide for the total number of students attending degree-conferring institutions.
Atlanta has a temperate climate, with hot, humid summers and mild, but occasionally chilly winters. Summer temperatures average 32 °C, while in winter they hover around 11 °C.

Campus facilities. Emory’s main campus sprawls across 600 acres of Atlanta’s historic Druid Hills suburb. A well-planned balance of buildings and green spaces, the main campus includes Peavine Creek, a branch of the historic Peachtree Creek and winds through maples, oaks, magnolias, pines and dogwoods that grace gently rolling hills. The Quadrangle is the symbolic centre of the campus, with many of the pink and gray marble buildings that frame the Quad listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In addition to its main campus in suburban Atlanta, Emory maintains two satellite campuses — Clairmont (offers undergraduate and graduate housing, with its own student activity and academic centres) and Briarcliff (which houses the Center for Lifelong Learning).

Academic endeavour is supported by five state-of-the-art libraries with access to more than 3.2 million volumes and 40,000 e-journal titles. The main Robert W. Woodruff Library houses rare books and distinctive manuscripts in its archives in addition to specialist collections in business, chemistry, music and media, and maths and science.

The George W. Woodruff P.E. Center is Emory’s showpiece athletics and recreation hub. The centre houses an olympic-sized swimming pool, eight outdoor and four indoor tennis courts, 400 and 200-metre indoor tracks, racquetball and squash courts, and two dance studios. The main campus also features four irrigated athletics fields, and the Blomeyer Fitness Center. On the social and cultural front, membership to over 300 clubs and organisations is open to students. Other on-campus facilities include a post office, bank, bookshop, and restaurants.

Admission. Emory’s selection process is rigorous and highly competitive. In 2008, the university received over 17,000 admission applications, from among whom 1,270 students were accepted. The minimum eligibility requirement for admission into the university’s undergrad programmes is a Plus Two/class XII certificate with above average grades. Foreign student applicants must complete an application form, furnish secondary school transcripts, submit official TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores, write SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), and/or the ACT (American College Test). An academic recommendation from a secondary school counselor or teacher, an essay and a certified financial information form for education in the United States is required. An application fee of $50 (Rs.2,600) is payable with the deadline for receiving applications being January 15 for academic programmes beginning in September.

For further information write to the Office of Undergraduate Admission, 200 Boisfeuillet Jones Center, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322. Tel: ++ 1 800 727 6036. Fax: 404 7274 303. Email: admiss@emory.edu; Website: www.emory.edu.

Accommodation. Emory University maintains more than 20 halls of residence and a dozen dining facilities to serve the resident students’ community. More than 70 percent of undergrads live on campus, availing accommodation ranging from doubles, suites, apartments or the contiguous Clairmont Campus, which houses its own student and academic centre. All but one of the halls of residence maintained by Residence Life and Housing are coed, while Thomas Hall is for women only. All halls of residence provide a television room, study spaces, kitchens, laundry facilities, air-conditioning, and cable and computer hookups in every dwelling unit.

Degree programmes. The university offers undergraduate and postgrad degree programmes through nine schools, with particular strengths in the arts and science, business, law, theology and the health professions. Undergraduate students have the option of spending the first two years of their four-year bachelor’s degree programme at Oxford College, located on the university’s original campus, 38 miles east of Atlanta. Subsequently they transfer to the main Emory campus to complete the last two years of their programme.

Summiya Yasmeen