Founded in 1632 by the Swedish King Gustav II Adolph, the University of Tartu (UT) is the oldest, largest and only classical university in Estonia. UT embraces a wide variety of academic fields. It offers 23 international degree programmes fully taught in English. As of 2017, approximately 14 000 students are enrolled, including close to 1300 international students. UT belongs to the TOP 1,2% of the world’s best universities (QS World University Rankings). More PhD degrees are defended at UT than in all other Estonian universities in total: 120 PhD degrees were defended only at UT in 2016 (239 at other Estonian universities). Most of the publications of Estonian universities come from UT: 1375 out of 2821 in 2016. UT belongs to the top 1% of the world’s most-cited universities and research institutions in the fields of Clinical Medicine, Chemistry, Environment & Ecology, Geoscience, Plant & Animal Science, Social Sciences (general), Molecular Biology & Genetics, Biology & Biochemistry, Neuroscience & Behavior, Psychiatry & Psychology (ISI Web of Science 2017). The university has cooperation agreements with 81 universities in 30 countries and participates in the activities of several European university networks, such as the Utrecht Network and Coimbra Group.
