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) sits on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York State, USA. It is best known for being home to Cornell University — an Ivy League school with almost 20,000 students (most of them studying on Cornell’s Ithaca campus). Ithaca College is also located just south of the city in the Town of Ithaca. The college is strongly linked to the city, further adding to Ithaca’s strong “college town” focus and atmosphere.
The City of Ithaca is the center of the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area (which also contains the separate municipalities of Town of Ithaca, Village of Cayuga Heights, Village of Lansing and other towns and villages in Tompkins County). The city is the county seat of Tompkins County. In 2000, the city's population was 29,287, and the metropolitan area had a population of 100,135. 2004 estimates puts the city population at 29,952, an increase of 2.3%.
Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca is the North American seat of His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.
Ithaca is a major educational center in Central New York. The city is home to Ithaca College, situated on South Hill, and Cornell University which overlooks the town from East Hill. The student population is very high, as almost 20,000 students are enrolled at Cornell, with an additional 6,300 students at Ithaca College. Tompkins Cortland Community College is located in the neighboring town of Dryden, New York, and has an extension center in downtown Ithaca. Empire State College offers non-traditional college courses to adults in downtown Ithaca.
The Ithaca City School District, which encompasses Ithaca and the surrounding area, enrolls about 5,500 K-12 students in eight elementary schools, two middle schools, Ithaca High School, and the Lehman Alternative Community School, which provides its students wide-ranging freedom to choose their own curriculum. There are also several private elementary and secondary schools in the Ithaca area, including Immaculate Conception School and the Cascadilla School.