Atlanta, this metro area is not only a hub of higher education with an emphasis at many schools on STEM, but also a unique part of the country where students can experience both big city benefits and college football rivalries. The most colleges and universities in Georgia are located in the greater Atlanta area. 

Here is the list of the best universities in the Atlanta metro area for your choice:

Emory University

Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836.

Emory University has nine academic divisions: Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Oxford College, Goizueta Business School, Laney Graduate School, School of Law, School of Medicine, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Rollins School of Public Health, and the Candler School of Theology. Emory University students come from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, five territories of the United States, and over 100 foreign countries.

Emory University is the leading coordinator of the U.S. Health Department's National Ebola Training and Education Center. The university is one of four institutions involved in the NIAID's Tuberculosis Research Units Program. The International Association of National Public Health Institutes is headquartered at the university.

Emory University has the 15th-largest endowment among U.S. colleges and universities. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and is cited for high scientific performance and citation impact in the CWTS Leiden Ranking. The National Science Foundation ranked the university 36th among academic institutions in the United States for research and development (R&D) expenditures. In 1995 Emory University was elected to the Association of American Universities, an association of the 65 leading research universities in the United States and Canada.

Emory faculty and alumni include 2 Prime Ministers, 9 university presidents, 11 members of the United States Congress, 2 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, a Vice President of the United States, a United States Speaker of the House, and a United States Supreme Court Justice. Other notable alumni include 21 Rhodes Scholars and 6 Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as Emmy Award winners, MacArthur Fellows, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, heads of state and other leaders in foreign governments. Emory has more than 149,000 alumni, with 75 alumni clubs established worldwide in 20 countries.

Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech and GT or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of the University System of Georgia and has satellite campuses in Savannah, Georgia; Metz, France; Shenzhen, China; and Singapore.

The school was founded as the Georgia School of Technology as part of Reconstruction plans to build an industrial economy in the post-Civil War Southern United States. Initially, it offered only a degree in mechanical engineering. By 1901, its curriculum had expanded to include electrical, civil, and chemical engineering. In 1948, the school changed its name to reflect its evolution from a trade school to a larger and more capable technical institute and research university. Today, Georgia Tech is organized into 6 colleges and contains about 31 departments and academic units, with emphasis on science and technology.

Student athletics, both organized and intramural, are a part of student and alumni life. The school's intercollegiate competitive sports teams, the four-time football national champion Yellow Jackets, and the nationally recognized fight song "Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech", have helped keep Georgia Tech in the national spotlight. Georgia Tech fields eight men's and seven women's teams that compete in the NCAA Division I athletics and the Football Bowl Subdivision. Georgia Tech is a member of the Coastal Division in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Spelman College

Spelman College is a private, historically Black, women's liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. It is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman received its collegiate charter in 1924, making it America's second oldest private historically Black liberal arts college for women.

The Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary was established on April 11, 1881 in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, by two teachers from the Oread Institute of Worcester, Massachusetts: Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard. Giles and Packard had met while Giles was a student, and Packard the preceptress, of the New Salem Academy in New Salem, Massachusetts, and fostered a lifelong friendship there. The two of them traveled to Atlanta specifically to found a school for Black freedwomen, and found support from Frank Quarles, the pastor of Friendship Baptist Church.

Giles and Packard began the school with 11 African-American women and $100 given to them by the First Baptist Church in Medford, Massachusetts, and a promise of further support from the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society (WABHMS), a group with which they were both affiliated in Boston. Although their first students were mostly illiterate, they envisioned their school to be a liberal arts institution – the first circular of the college stated that they planned to offer "algebra, physiology, essays, Latin, rhetoric, geometry, political economy, mental philosophy (psychology), chemistry, botany, Constitution of the United States, astronomy, zoology, geology, moral philosophy, and evidences of Christianity". Over time, they attracted more students; by the time the first term ended, they had enrolled 80 students in the seminary. The WABHMS made a down payment on a nine-acre (36,000 m2) site in Atlanta relatively close to the church they began in, which originally had five buildings left from a Union Civil War encampment, to support classroom and residence hall needs.

Clark Atlanta University

Clark Atlanta University (CAU or Clark Atlanta) is a private, Methodist, historically black research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Clark Atlanta is the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the Southern United States. Founded on September 19, 1865 as Atlanta University, it consolidated with Clark College (established 1869) to form Clark Atlanta University in 1988. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".

In the city of Atlanta, while the Civil War was well underway, two literate African American ex-slaves, James Tate and Grandison B. Daniels, in 1862 established the first school in Atlanta for African American children. It was located on the corner of Courtland and Jenkins Streets in an old church building of Friendship Baptist Church, the original home of First Baptist Church. Tate and Daniels, along with 25 other former slaves, founded Friendship Baptist Church, the first black Baptist autonomous congregation. They began holding classes in an old church building built in 1848. The building was badly damaged during the Siege of Atlanta in 1864. The school would later become Atlanta University in September 1865.

When white missionary Reverend Frederick Ayer, along with his wife, arrived in Atlanta in November 1865 under the auspices of the American Missionary Association, the AMA church purchased a boxcar for $310 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and sent it to Friendship by the Ninth Street Baptist Church of Cincinnati, Ohio. The modest space of the boxcar served two purposes: a new teaching space for Atlanta University and a meeting space for the Friendship Church congregation. Tate and Daniels readily transferred their responsibilities to Ayer, who was better prepared to lead the educational effort, in 1865.

Atlanta University was founded on September 19, 1865 by James Tate and Grandison Daniels. Two years later, Edmund Asa Ware of the American Missionary Association was appointed the first president. Atlanta University was chartered in 1867 with the assistance from Oliver Otis Howard of the Freedmen's Bureau. He also appointed William J. White as educational agent of the Freedmen's Bureau on January 12, 1867. White was the half-brother of founder James Tate and was the co-founder of the Augusta Institute in 1867, which would become Morehouse College. He served as trustee of Atlanta University in 1869.

Atlanta University—now Clark Atlanta University—is the first HBCU in the Southern United States, and the nation's oldest graduate institution serving a predominantly African-American student body. It was chartered on October 17, 1867. It offered its first instruction at the postsecondary level in 1869. Its first graduating class was in 1873 (normal school for future teachers including women), and it awarded its first six bachelor's degrees in June 1876.

Georgia State University

Georgia State University (Georgia State, State, or GSU) is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1913, it is one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities. It is also the largest institution of higher education by enrollment based in Georgia and is in the top 10 in the nation in number of students with a diverse majority-minority student population of around 54,000 students, including approximately 33,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the main campus downtown.

Georgia State is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". The university's over $200 million in research expenditures for the 2018 fiscal year ranked first in the nation among universities without an engineering, medical, or agricultural school for the third year in a row. The university is the most comprehensive public institution in Georgia, offering more than 250 degree programs in over 100 fields of study spread across 10 academic colleges and schools. 

Georgia State has two libraries: University Library, which is split between Library North and Library South on the main campus and also divided among the Perimeter College campuses, and Law Library, which is located on the main campus. Together, both libraries contain over 13 million holdings and serve as federal document depositories. Georgia State has a $2.5 billion economic impact in Georgia.

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