The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The system includes UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth, UMass Lowell, and the UMass Medical School. The UMass system was ranked 56th in the world in 2010 by the Times World University Rankings.

UMass Amherst is the flagship and the largest of the UMass campuses, as well as the first established. Like many colleges and universities, Massachusetts Agricultural College (as it was originally called) the Amherst campus was founded as a land-grant college in 1863, receiving initial start-up funding as part of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. It became Massachusetts State College in 1931, and University of Massachusetts in 1947. The library system is the largest state-supported library system in New England with over 6.1 million items. The campus has many architecturally distinctive buildings commissioned by the Commonwealth and designed by world-renowned architects.

UMass Amherst offers a variety of academic and co-curricular options. Ninety-three percent of the 1,174 full-time faculty members hold the highest degree in their fields. The average SAT score (reading and math only) for the 2011 entering class is 1220, and the average GPA is 3.6 on a 4.0 scale. The campus has 21,373 undergraduates and offers 86 bachelor’s degree programs. There is a student-to-faculty ratio of 17:1. The UMass Amherst honors college is called Commonwealth College where admission is more competitive with an average SAT score of 1390.

Massachusetts (ⁱ/ˌmæsəˈtʃuːsɨts/), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Massachusetts is the 7th least extensive, but the 14th most populous and the 3rd most densely populated of the 50 United States. The state features two separate metropolitan areas – the eastern Boston metropolitan area and the western Springfield metropolitan area. Approximately two thirds of the state's population lives in Greater Boston, most of which is either urban or suburban. Western Massachusetts features one urban area – the Knowledge Corridor along the Connecticut River – and a mix of college towns and rural areas. Massachusetts is the most populous of the six New England states and has the US's sixth highest GDP per capita.