Established in 1790
Lexington, KENTUCKY
Transylvania, a small, private liberal arts college of about 1,120 men and women, is consistently ranked among the best of its kind in the nation. The name_from the Latin that means across the woods_refers to the heavily forested Transylvania settlement in which the University was founded in 1780. Transylvania was the first college west of the Allegheny Mountains and the sixteenth in the nation. The University established the first schools of medicine and law in what was then the West and educated the doctors, lawyers, ministers, political leaders, and others who helped shape the young nation.