University of Hawaii at Manoa

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, U.H., is a public co-educational research university as well as the flagship campus of the University of Hawaiʻi system.

It was founded in 1907 as a land-grant college of agriculture and mechanical arts. A destination of choice, students and faculty come from across the nation and the world to take advantage of UH Mānoa's unique research opportunities, diverse community, nationally-ranked Division I athletics program and beautiful landscape. 

The university creates, refines, disseminates and perpetuates human knowledge; offers a comprehensive array of undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees through the doctoral level, including law and medicine; carries out advanced research and extends services to the community. Students have special opportunities for Asian, Pacific and Hawaiian educational experiences and involvement in research activities, service learning and co-curricular activities.

The National Science Foundation ranked UH Manoa is the 45th among 395 public universities for Research and Development (R&D) expenditures in the year 2014.

For 2017, UH Mānoa was ranked tied for the 169th among national universities and tied for the 89th among public universities in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report. 

In graduate school rankings for 2016, U.S. News & World Report ranked the School of Medicine tied for the 19th in the country for primary care, the College of Education the 76th, the Law School tied for the 82nd, the School of Nursing tied for the 83rd, the College of Engineering tied for the the 140th, with the Shidler College of Business' part-time MBA program ranked thr 140th in the nation.

Notable alumni of the University of Hawaii at Manoa include oceanographer Bob Ballard (M.S. 1966), businessman Richard Parsons (B.A. 1968), congresswoman Tammy Duckworth (B.A. 1990), congressman Mark Takai (B.A. 1989, M.P.H. 1991), and several U.S. Senators, including Daniel Akaka (B.A. 1952, M.Ed. 1966), Mazie Hirono (B.A. 1970), and Daniel Inouye (B.A. 1950). Additionally, both parents of current U.S. president Barack Obama graduated from the university.

Today, the primary facet of the University consists of the four Colleges of Arts and Sciences: Arts and Humanities, Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences. The college of agriculture and mechanical arts is now the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, one of the few agricultural colleges in the United States focused on the tropics. 

UH Mānoa is home to two of the state's most prominent professional schools. The William S. Richardson School of Law and the School of Medicine are the only law and medical schools in Hawaiʻi. The Center for Hawaiian Studies provides excellence in the pursuit of knowledge concerning the Native people of Hawaii.

The UH is relatively easy to get in, its acceptance rate I about 79%. The most popular majors among students are registered nursing; psychology; speech communication and rhetoric.

Besides, UH Manoa has widely recognized strengths in tropical medicine, oceanography, astronomy, electrical engineering, volcanology, evolutionary biology, comparative philosophy, comparative religion, Hawaiian studies, Asian studies, Pacific Islands studies, and Asian and Pacific region public health. UH Manoa offers instruction in more languages than any U.S. institution outside the Department of State.