University vs college

Applying to College
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What is the difference between a university and a college?

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Generally, a university is a collection of colleges, schools, institutes, etc.

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In US terms, usually a college only offers undergraduate degrees, and a university offers both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. A university may call its undergraduate division a college, and sometimes it might have multiple colleges. People who “go to college” in the United States might be going to either sort of institution for an undergraduate degree.

Confusingly, some universities are still called colleges either formally (like Dartmouth College), or informally (like Wesleyan University, which many people will refer to as a Liberal Arts College). Particularly fun examples include the Naval War College and Army War College, which ONLY grant graduate degrees. Same for the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.

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In the US, the use of “college” versus “university” may be, depending on context, one of the following:

  1. No difference, in that the terms are used interchangeably.
  2. Distinguished by using “college” to indicate a usually smaller or mainly undergraduate focused school, while using “university” to refer to a school with a wider range of graduate level programs. In this context, “college” can include both 2-year and 4-year schools, but “university” generally does not include 2-year schools.
  3. Distinguished by a “university” being divided into “colleges”, commonly along majors, like “College of Arts and Sciences”, “College of Engineering”, etc…

In other countries, the use of these terms may be different from in the US.

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Things get especially frustrating for international students who have to translate the word, “college” for folks back home who may otherwise get it mixed up with the word for high school.

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Or something like a 2-year community college, which is how the word “college” is commonly used in Canadian English. Canadians commonly speak of “going to university” rather than “going to college” to refer to studying toward a bachelor’s degree.

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