Midshipmen study to be officers in the US Navy and Marine Corps on a peaceful, 338-acre campus along the Severn River and College Creek. In 1850 the five-year-old Naval School became the official undergraduate college for the US Navy. More than a century later, competition is fierce to be one of the 4,000 midshipmen that gets a rigorous and free education at the academy. Few buildings in Annapolis rival the glorious gold-domed US Naval Academy chapel (1908, Ernest Flagg), modeled after the Hotel des Invalides in Paris.