The Ateneo de Manila University (Filipino: Pamantasang Ateneo de Manila) is a private, coeducational, Roman Catholic, teaching and research university located in Quezon City, Philippines. It is is comprised of basic, higher, and professional education units. The units of higher education—the School of Humanities, the John Gokongwei School of Management, the School of Science and Engineering, and the School of Social Sciences—are collectively known as the Loyola Schools. The Graduate School of Business, the Law School, the School of Government, and the School of Medicine and Public Health comprise the Professional Schools. Like most Philippine universities, the Ateneo has a grade school and high school noted for high educational standards.

To understand the soul of the Ateneo de Manila University -- what shaped it and where it came from, where it is going and where it can take you -- it is essential to understand its motto, Lux in Domino, or "Light in the Lord."

From the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians (5:8), these words capture the spirit of a way of life which the Ateneo holds up to her sons and daughters as their best contribution to the work by which God transforms the world. To be "light in the Lord" in all fullness demands moving insistently and deliberately towards God as the center of a person's life, identifying the issues that such a centering poses, and then moving out to the world to find ever new ways of constructing the edifice, cultivating the garden, painting the masterpiece, that God is unfolding in one's life.

It is a call to BE that light of the Lord in the world.