The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (often referred to as The University of Minnesota, Minnesota, the U of M, UMN, or simply the U) is a public research university in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses are approximately apart, and the Saint Paul campus is actually in neighboring Falcon Heights.

It is the oldest and largest campus within the University of Minnesota system and has the sixth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 51,147 students in 2013–14.

The university is the flagship institution of the University of Minnesota system, and is organized into 19 colleges and schools, with sister campuses in Crookston, Duluth, Morris, and Rochester.

Undergraduate education is the post-secondary education previous to the postgraduate education.

It includes all the academic programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree.

For example, in the United States an entry level university student is known as an undergraduate, while students of higher degrees are known as graduates.

In some other educational systems and subjects, undergraduate education is post-secondary education up to the level of a master's degree; this is the case for some science courses in Britain and some medicine courses in Europe.

A public university is a university that is predominantly funded by public means through a national or subnational government, as opposed to private universities.

Whether a national university is considered public varies from one country (or region) to another, largely depending on the specific education landscape.

A graduate school (sometimes shortened as grad school) is a school that awards advanced academic degrees (i.e. master's and doctoral degrees) with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate (bachelor's) degree with a high grade point average.

A distinction is typically made between graduate schools (where courses of study vary in the degree to which they provide training for a particular profession) and professional schools, which offer specialized advanced degrees in professional fields such as medicine, nursing, business, engineering, or law.

The distinction between graduate schools and professional schools is not absolute, as various professional schools offer graduate degrees (e.g., some nursing schools offer a master's degree in nursing).

Also, some graduate degrees train students for a specific profession (e.g. an MSc or a PhD in epidemiology trains a person to be an epidemiologist).

Educational research refers to the systematic collection and analysis of data related to the field of education.

Research may involve a variety of methods.

Research may involve various aspects of education including student learning, teaching methods, teacher training, and classroom dynamics.