Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is an American private Ivy League research university located in New York City, New York, United States. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. Today the university operates seven Columbia Global Centers overseas in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Santiago and Nairobi.