The University of Kent (formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury, abbreviated as Cantuar. for post-nominals) is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1965 and is regarded as one of the UK's "plate glass universities". The University of Kent's main site is a rural campus near Canterbury situated within 300 acres of park land, which houses over 4,300 students. The university has additional UK sites in Medway and Tonbridge, and postgraduate centres in Brussels and Paris. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise the University of Kent was placed 24th out of 118 participating institutions in terms of the best, or 4*, research in a ranking produced by Times Higher Education. The University of Kent is ranked amongst the top 25 institutions in the United Kingdom at 23rd place. According to The Daily Telegraph, in 2010 just under 30,000 students applied to the University of Kent through UCAS and just 5,242 were accepted - a 17.5% success rate. The average UCAS points offer given for 2009/10 was 328 or ABB-AAB. Kent is a member of the Santander Group of European universities encouraging social and economic development.