Middle East Technical University (METU; in Turkish, Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, commonly referred to as ODTÜ) is a public technical university located in Ankara, Turkey. The university puts special emphasis on research and education in engineering and natural sciences, offering about 40 undergraduate programs within 5 faculties, and 97 masters and 62 doctorate programs within 5 graduate schools. The main campus of METU spans an area of 11,100 acres (4,500 ha), comprising, in addition to academic and auxiliary facilities, a forest area of 7,500 acres (3,000 ha), and the natural lake Eymir. METU has more than 95,000 alumni worldwide. The official language of instruction at METU is English. Over one third of the 1,000 highest scoring students in the national university entrance examination choose to enroll in METU; and most of its departments accept the top 1% of the nearly 1.5 million applicants. METU had the greatest share in national research funding by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) in the last five years, and it is the leading university in Turkey in terms of the number of European Union Framework Programme (FP) projects participation.