Pretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive (administrative) and official de facto capital; the other two being Cape Town and Bloemfontein, respectively the legislative and judicial capitals.
Pretoria is contained in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality as one of several constituent former administrations (among which also Centurion and Soshanguve), and therefore sometimes incorrectly referred to as Tshwane — this contentious issue is still being decided.
Pretoria is situated in the transitional area between the Highveld and the Bushveld, approximately 50 km north of Johannesburg in the north-east of South Africa. It lies in a warm, well sheltered, fertile valley, surrounded by the hills of the Magaliesberg range, 1,370 m (4,495 ft) above sea level. The city's coordinates are approximately 25°43′S, 28°17′E. Snow is an extremely rare event, which occurs once or twice in a century, with the last recorded snowfall on 27 June 2007.
The city has a population of approximately one million. The main languages spoken in Pretoria include Tswana, Ndebele, Afrikaans, and English. The whole Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality had a population of 1 985 997 as of the 2001 census.
About the University of Pretoria
The University of Pretoria is the leading research university in South Africa and one of the largest in the country. In 2006, student numbers totalled 49 226 (38 389 contact and 10 837 distance). The University has six campuses and a number of other sites of operation such as the Pretoria Academic Hospital. Central administration is located at the Hatfield campus.
In 1996, the University of Pretoria became the university with the highest research output in South Africa and has since then maintained this status. The University is ranked as one of the top 500 universities in the world and is only one of four universities in South Africa to have achieved this distinction.
The University will celebrate its centenary in 2008.
The academic programmes of the University are offered in nine faculties and a business school. The following faculties comprise a total of 140 departments and 85 centres, institutes and bureaus: Economic and Management Sciences, Education, Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology, Health Sciences, Humanities, Law, Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Theology, Veterinary Science and the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS).
UP is at the forefront of tertiary education in the country and we collaborate with world-class partners to ensure continued excellence in learning and teaching. The Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology is the second-largest faculty with more than 8 000 students. All the programmes in the School of Engineering are accredited by the Engineering Council of South Africa and recognised for professional engineering registration through the Washington Accord by the following countries: United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, USA, New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong. The School produces approximately a third of the country’s engineers and is according to ISI citations ranked in the top 1% of the world.
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