Boston University is a non-sectarian private university located in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1839 in Vermont as a Methodist seminary, then transferred to New Hampshire in 1847, to Brookline, Massachusetts in 1867, and finally moved to its present campus along the Charles River in Boston in 1928. It should not be confused with Boston College, an entirely separate university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

The university, with over 2,000 faculty and nearly 30,000 students, represents the fourth largest private university in the nation. It operates on two urban campuses, the main campus on the Charles River in Boston's Back Bay, and the Boston University Medical Center in Boston's South End neighborhood.

Boston University includes Colleges of Fine Arts, Arts and Sciences, Communication, Engineering, General Studies, and Health and Rehabilitation; Schools of Education, Dentistry, Hospitality Administration, Law, Medicine, Management, Music, Public Health, Social Work, Theatre Arts, and Visual Arts; as well as the prestigious University Professors program. The university offers associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees.

Boston University's Terriers compete in basketball, cross country, golf, ice hockey, rowing, soccer, swimming, tennis and wrestling, while the Lady Terriers compete in basketball, cross country, field hockey, golf, lacrosse, rowing, soccer, swimming, tennis, and track. The school's athletic teams compete in the America East, Hockey East, and Colonial Athletic Association conferences, and their mascot is Rhett the Boston Terrier. Boston University recently constructed the new Agganis Arena, which opened on January 3, 2005 with a men's hockey game between the Terriers and the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers.