Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary. Mildmay, a Puritan, originally intended Emmanuel to be a college of training for Protestant preachers to rival the successful Catholic theological schools that had trained Dominican friars for years.

Emmanuel still has quite a few theological students, but has broadened itself to include students of a wide variety of subjects, and opened its doors to female students in 1979.

Emma, as it is known throughout the University, attracts large numbers of undergraduate applications owing to its reputation as a 'friendly college' (although several other colleges also claim this). Emmanuel topped the Tompkins Table in 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007, which ranks colleges according to end-of-year examination results. Emmanuel has been among the top five colleges in each of the last eight years (2000-2007). The 2007 figures (2006 in brackets) were 66.62% (66.64%) with 29.5% (29.4%) awarded as First Class degrees.

Emmanuel is one of the wealthier colleges at Cambridge with an estimated financial endowment of £162m (2005).