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Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is also the first and oldest corporation in North America.

Initially called "New College" or "the college at New Towne", the institution was named Harvard College on March 13, 1639, after a young clergyman named John Harvard—a graduate of England's Emmanuel College, Cambridge (a college of the University of Cambridge) and St Olave's Grammar School, Orpington in the UK—who bequeathed the College his library of four hundred books and £779 (which was half of his estate). The earliest known official reference to Harvard as a "university" occurs in the new Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.
Harvard's library collection now contains more than 15 million volumes, making it the largest academic library in the United States, and the fourth among the five "mega-libraries" of the world (after the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the French Bibliothèque nationale, but ahead of the New York Public Library). At $38.7 billion as of January 2008, Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any non-profit organization except for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The university had a faculty of about 2,400 professors of the 2006-2007school year, with 6,715 undergraduate and 12,424 graduate students. The school color is crimson, which is also the name of the school’s sports teams and its daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.
Harvard College accepted 7.1% of applicants for the class of 2012, a record low. The increased selectivity was partially due to increased rates of enrollment the university anticipated after announcing a large increase in financial aid for 2008. For the class of 2011, Harvard accepted nearly 9% of applicants. In its "America's Best Colleges 2008" issue US News and World Report's ranked Harvard as the most selective undergraduate college in the United States and second among the best national universities behind  Princeton University.
US News and World Report listed 2006 admissions percentages of 14.3% for the business school, 4.5% for public health, 12.5% for engineering, 11.3% for law, 14.6% for education, and 4.9% for the medical school.
In the THES - QS World University Rankings, Harvard has earned the top spot in each year they have been published since 2005.