About AUP

You’re looking for a place. Ideally, it would be in a city bursting at the seams with culture, art, and opportunities. You’d like a vibrant learning community, built on a strong academic foundation that would cultivate your critical thinking skills and reveal the links between diverse disciplines. Upon leaving, you’d be ready to meet the needs of a globalized world and would have access to a thriving network of extraordinary alumni in a variety of fields. You’re looking for this place. We think you’ve found it.

The American University of Paris does more than provide an American-style university education in Paris. Our global liberal arts heritage drives us to offer an academic experience that inspires over 1200 students, representing a record 110 nationalities and 65 languages, to cross cultural, national, ethnic, religious and linguistic boundaries in the AUP classroom and beyond. Our faculty of 35 nationalities uses its research and practice to fuel thought-provoking conversations in intimate and collaborative classroom settings, where you will explore different academic disciplines from a variety of perspectives. You will be given every opportunity to connect your learning to professional and real-life settings in Paris and beyond, with a global liberal arts education that will help lead you to a fulfilling career or further study around the world.

As AUP student, you epitomize AUP’s commitment to a world of interdependence through your passion for change, your determination to build bridges among far-flung communities, your leadership of extracurricular organizations, and your interest in our international opportunities for scholarships, volunteering, and internships. We are committed to leveraging our extensive university relationships and resources, including our worldwide alumni network, to help our students open the doors to their futures and to succeed in today’s globalized world.

AUP’s 23,000 alumni are currently living and working in 145 countries around the globe. Their stories demonstrate the impact of an AUP education. We expect that you, like our graduates, who often pursue their work in languages and cultures not their own, will go on to a successful career or further study around the world. 

From AUP's historic beginning in rented classrooms of the American Church of Paris and the vow of our founder to "transcend the bounds of narrow nationalisms," to today's explicit intention to provide our independent and creative students with the academic, interpersonal and pre-professional preparation needed to confront contemporary global realities, our mission has not wavered.

Chartered in 1962, The American University of Paris is a private, independent, international university located in the heart of Paris, in the city’s historic 7th arrondissement. AUP students, faculty and staff come from all over the world. The primary language of instruction is English. The University offers both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees through programs of study across the disciplines, rooted in the American liberal arts tradition.

AUP Mission Statement

The American University of Paris offers a student-centered, intellectually demanding, and career-enabling learning experience in a dynamic European capital. Here, curious and courageous thinkers embrace disciplinary and cultural diversity. Together, we develop creative approaches to enduring questions and contemporary global challenges. Engagement with Paris and an exceptionally international community shapes our research, learning, and campus life. 

How We Do This

The University achieves its mission by offering students programs of study that combine liberal arts inquiry with preparation for professional life. Whether pursuing majors in social or natural sciences, humanities, arts, or pre-professional and applied disciplines, students benefit from the dynamic and engaging teaching of a world-class faculty in small classroom settings. AUP students engage with a wide range of intellectual ideas and cultural perspectives in our campus community, and are offered opportunities to explore those ideas and perspectives through direct experience of Paris, the rest of France, and beyond. AUP’s integrated learning model blends classroom learning and its practical applications, preparing students to reflect and apply, to analyze and act. In these ways, an AUP education supports professional skill development and cultural fluency; the very global engagement and the capacity to negotiate difference that emerge from the distinctive diversity of AUP’s students, faculty, and staff. AUP students forge lifelong connections to one another and to the University. Upon graduation, they continue to benefit from the global network as part of the alumni community.