According to 1995 National Research Council data, as well as to the 2005 academic quality rankings by the Times Higher Education Supplement, the University of Texas at Austin is one of the nation's top fifteen research universities and is the leading research university in the South and Southwest. Its library holdings are among the ten largest in the United States. Some two dozen graduate programs at UT–including Anthropology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Classics, Computer Sciences, Germanic Studies, Integrative Biology, Law, Linguistics, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics, Psychology, Sociology, and Spanish–are regularly ranked among the ten or fifteen best in the country. With roughly fifty thousand students, UT Austin is also the largest campus in the nation.
Long one of the nation's leading law schools, UT's recent recruitment of leading senior scholars from Stanford, NYU, Columbia, and Michigan has pushed the school into the very top ranks of American law faculties. Science Watch (2004), for example, now ranks the law faculty 2nd in the nation (after Yale) for scholarly impact based on citations to faculty work. The Law School has also long been unusual for its equally strong commitment to teaching excellence. Princeton Review national surveys of student satisfaction with teaching have placed UT in the top ten for eight years in a row, even ranking the school first one year. Graduates of the Law School currently hold tenured or tenure-track positions at Chicago-Kent College of Law, College of William & Mary, Florida State University, Indiana University (Bloomington), New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Southern Methodist University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Universities of Arizona (Tucson), California (Hastings), Chicago, Colorado (Boulder), Connecticut, Florida (Gainesville), Georgia, Houston, Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas (Austin), and Washington (Seattle), among other places.
With one of the largest faculties in the United States, UT offers excellent coverage of all major fields and historical periods in philosophy. Recent senior appointments of Jonathan Dancy, John Deigh, Mark Sainsbury, and Michael Tye have catapulted the program into the top ranks nationally and internationally. Graduates of the PhD program currently hold tenured or tenure-track positions at Boston College, California Institute of Technology, College of William & Mary, Emory University, Georgia State University, New York University, Queen's University (Canada), Rice University, Wellesley College, and the Universities of British Columbia, California (Santa Cruz), Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Michigan (Ann Arbor), Notre Dame, Sydney, and Washington (Seattle), among other places.
As both the capital of the nation's second largest state and home to the nation's largest research university, Austin combines the virtues of a college town with the cosmopolitan amenities of a major metropolis. One of the fastest growing cities in America, Austin recently surpassed Seattle in population, with more than 650,000 residents in the city, and more than a million in the metropolitan area. Famous as "the live music capital of the world," Austin offers plentiful cultural and culinary opportunities, and at reasonable prices. A mild climate makes it possible to enjoy Austin's miles of hike and bike trails and lakes throughout the year.