Stellenbosch University

Stellenbosch University (SU) is located 50 miles from Cape Town in South Africa’s Western Cape province.

Founded in 1919, the university is set among the Boland Mountains, a renowned wine region, where it is surrounded by vineyards and the nearby nature reserves of Jonkershoek and Simonsberg.

Stellenbosch itself is a picturesque historical town comprising architecture that reflects South Africa’s Dutch colonial past, as well as cafes, boutiques, art galleries and avenues lined with oak trees.

The university has five campuses, with the Stellenbosch Main campus housing eight of its ten faculties.

Of its 30,000 strong student body, 28% of its students are black (2013 data), compared to a figure of just 762 in 1990, at the time of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Around 4,000 students are international and hail from around 100 countries worldwide.

SU also runs a student exchange programme where students have the opportunity to study abroad at one of its 100 partners institutions overseas located in France, Germany, the US, Japan and many more.

SU’s other Cape Town campuses are in Tygerberg, a northern suburb, which houses Health Sciences; its city campus in Bellville, where the Graduate School of Business and the School of Public Management and Planning are located; the Saldanha campus, with the only Military Science faculty of its kind in South Africa; and the Ukwanda Rural Clinical School in Worcester, which opened in 2012, and is home to the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

The university boasts a long and proud sporting tradition. Its students and sports teams are known as ‘Maties’, a term that probably arises from the Afrikaans colloquialism maat, meaning ‘mate.’

As well as sports, SU also lays claim to a museum, a botanical garden and art gallery designed by the renowned German architect, Carl Otto Hager.