UMIST stands for the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. It was a university in Manchester, in the north of England, that taught science, engineering, computing, chemistry and similar practical subjects — the technical side of things rather than literature or history. It had a long history going back to a mechanics' institute in 1824, and it was well respected, especially in chemical engineering and computing. Here is the important part, and it is why the tidy definition above is a little out of date: UMIST no longer exists as a separate university. In 2004 it joined with the Victoria University of Manchester, and the two became one big institution called the University of Manchester. So today, if a person says "I studied at UMIST", they are telling you roughly when they were a student — before 2004 — the same way saying "I worked at a place that no longer has that name" quietly gives away a date. You will still see the name on older buildings on the Manchester campus, in scientific papers from the 1970s to the early 2000s, and on people's CVs. Say it as one word, YOO-mist, not letter by letter — that makes it what we call an acronym.