Vanderbilt University is a university in Nashville, Tennessee.

It was founded in 1873 by Cornelius Vanderbilt with a donation of one million dollars. It hosts around 13,000 students. Vanderbilt spent $738 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 31st in the nation. In 2013, Vanderbilt University was ranked ninth in the country in funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Vanderbilt is ranked the 116th best university in the world in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and 33rd in the United States by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. The Academic Ranking of World Universities ranks Vanderbilt as the 62nd-best university in the world.

Additionally the ARWU Field rankings in 2015 placed Vanderbilt as 18th best in the world for Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy, and 21st in Social Sciences. Vanderbilt is a founding and charter member of the Southeastern Conference and for a half-century has been the conference's only private school.

The university fields six men's and ten women's intercollegiate teams and has won five NCAA championships.