is college university in america?

In the USA, college and university are used as interchangeable terms to refer to what you do after high school. We don't really have anything like sixth form. Most people go right to college/university after finishing high school (some will go into trade schools instead or will delay going to college and choose to do something else for a year or more). Technically speaking, there IS a difference between colleges and universities -- both colleges and universities are the level of school after high school, but universities typically offer graduate-level degrees (i.e. Master's and Doctoral degrees, like the PhD) in at least some fields and are also very focused on research, while colleges do not focus so much on research and do not offer degrees higher than the Bachelor's degree (which is called an undergraduate degree). However, the average American on the street uses the terms college and university interchangeably to refer to the kind of school you go to after high school, and which term a person use depends on personal preference. For example, Harvard is a university, but it would be just as common for someone to say "I'm going to college at Harvard" as it would be for someone to say "I'm going to university at Harvard."

Also, just so you know, we don't do diplomas here, we do degrees. I'm guessing our degrees and your diplomas are roughly the same thing, but specifics (like how long it takes to get a diploma that is equivalent to a specific degree over here) are a little different.

Is College University In America

At the undergrad level you are essentially correct.

When a US school is called a “College” it is a single school though it may offer many majors. If it is a “University” it is a collection of several schools, called “colleges”. When you go to a university you actually attend a college that is part of the university.

For example, my daughter was at the College of Information Technology and Engineering which is part of a larger university. That university also has a College of Liberal Arts, College of Science, and College of Medicine.

As well, colleges are often only undergrad schools. Most schools with graduate programs are usually universities.

However there are exceptions and there are colleges with graduate programs.

If you are going for an undergrad degree it is fine to go to a 4 year college instead of a university.

However, in Canada, a “college” is sort of like what is called a “community college in the USA in that they offer 2 year programs and can offer university transfer in many cases. In Canada “Community Colleges” are often one year schools that teach a trade. The 4 year schools in Canada are almost all called “Universities”.

After 12 years of mandated schooling in the USA, you achieve (hopefully) a diploma of graduation. You have completed all the basic necessary education required by the government. Most people are around 18 years old at time of completion.

College is an optional 4 year program (usually, but may be done in less) where you take required basic higher education courses, plus classes specifically aimed at earning a degree in a specific field. After meeting all the requirements, you receive a degree in your field of study (sometimes more than one degree, in multiple fields).

University is, technically, simply a collection of colleges, and after attending college, you may opt to take more courses from various colleges in a University to earn an advanced degree in your field. This is where you would attend Medical, Law, Divinity, Business school, etc. to earn the advanced degree that these fields require. These degrees all have different requirements of courses and years.

Hope that's plain enough.

In the US, there is no "college" like you have it in the UK. A levels and BTECs don't exist in the US. Instead, they'd call those years "high school". They still go to "school" up until age 18, but they call that time "high school".

In the US, they use the term college to mean "university". So if an American were going to go to Oxford University in the UK, and they were talking about it with their friends in the US, they'd say they were going away to college next year, at Oxford. College in the US means university.

Yes, in a way college is university.

However, there are also community colleges where you take pre requirements for a year or up to 2 years.

Say you want to get a degree in nursing, but you don't have the money to pay for a big university. You have the option of a attending a smaller university, or college, and in this college you get rid of the so called pre requirements for your main major. You take clases like english 101, biology 101, chemistry 101, and so on; once you clear as many classes as you can, then you move on to the university, which looks at the classes you took in the college and says, yes we will accept 10/12 classes. Or they accept them all. Typically though, before you go to the community college, you look to see what classes you can transfer to the university so that you don't waste money taking classes that later on won't transfer.

So when you're in the world and you say, I'm going to such and such college, then most people get the idea that you're at a university level, but you are at a local small college. For university talk, you typically say the letters of your university or the name of it like, i went to UT, or i went to Harvard, or I went to UM, or i'm taking classes at Duke.

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