Boston University is a private comprehensive university in the United States. It was founded in 1839 and is located in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, close to Harvard University and MIT. Boston University has more than 33,000 students from more than 140 countries around the world and more than 10,000 faculty and staff. It is one of the largest private institutions in the United States. In the 2014 USNEWS comprehensive ranking of American universities, it ranked 41st with Lehigh University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.