Texas A&M University, often referred to as Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU, is a public, land-grant, research university located in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. The letters "A&M" originally stood for "Agricultural and Mechanical", but today they no longer explicitly stand for anything. The Texas legislature officially renamed the school "Texas A&M University" in 1963, specifying the symbolic nature of the letters "A" and "M", which reflect the institutions past.