opened the first university hospital in the country. James Burrill Angell, who served as the university's president from 1871 to 1909, expanded the curriculum to include professional studies in dentistry, architecture, engineering, government, and medicine. The University of Michigan conferred the degree of Bachelor of Science in 1855, four years after the Lawrence Scientific School at Cambridge conferred the degree in 1851, for the first time in the United States, making Michigan the second institution in the country to confer the degree. The degree of Bachelor of Philosophy was conferred for the first time in the university's history upon six students in 1870. The degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy was first offered in 1875. Methods of instruction had also undergone important changes. The seminar method of study was first introduced into the university by Charles Kendall Adams in 1871-1872, making the university the first American institution to naturalize this product of the German soil. By 1866, enrollment had increased to 1,205 students. Women were first admitted in 1870, although Alice Robinson Boise Wood had become the first woman to attend classes (without matriculating) in 1866–7. Among the early students in the School of Medicine was Jose Celso Barbosa, who in 1880 graduated as valedictorian and the first Puerto Rican to get a university degree in the United States. He returned to Puerto Rico to practice medicine and also served in high-ranking posts in the government. Michigan was involved with the building of the Philippine education, legal, and public health systems during the era of the American colonization of the Philippines through the efforts of Michigan alumni that included Dean Conant Worcester and George A. Malcolm. Throughout its history, Michigan has been one of the nation's largest universities, vying with the largest private universities such as Harvard University in Cambridge and Columbia University (then known as Columbia College) in New York during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and then holding this position of national leadership until the emergence of the statewide public university systems in the post-WWII years. By the turn of the 19th century, the university was the second largest in the United States after Harvard University. Michigan is sometimes referred to as the "Harvard of the West" (though separated by over 600 miles, Michigan is located exactly west of Harvard, at 42.278 degrees north). There are several versions regarding the origin of the analogy.