For over 150 years, Penn Engineering's world-acclaimed faculty, state-of-the-art research laboratories and highly interdisciplinary curricula have offered a learning experience that is unparalleled. Having evolved in transformative ways to meet the technological opportunities and challenges of the 21st Century, the School's educational philosophy has remained constant: to integrate current theory and hands-on experience with modern instrumentation and analytic techniques. The University of Pennsylvania (commonly referred to as Penn) is a private university, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. A member of the Ivy League, Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and considers itself to be the first university in the United States with both undergraduate and graduate studies.