Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark in 1747, then to the current site nine years later, and renamed itself Princeton University in 1896.
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with about 6,800 undergraduate students and about 14,000 postgraduate students. Established in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, clergyman John Harvard, Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning. Its history, influence, wealth, and academic reputation have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Chartered by Connecticut Colony, the "Collegiate School" was established in 1701 by clergy to educate Congregational ministers. It moved to New Haven in 1716 and shortly after was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from British East India Company governor Elihu Yale. Its faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research.
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, seven of which belong to the Ivy League. It has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top ten universities in the world.
The University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or Chicago) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1890, the school is located on a 217-acre (88-hectare) campus in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, near Lake Michigan. The University of Chicago holds top positions in various national and international rankings. The university is composed of the undergraduate college as well as various graduate programs and interdisciplinary committees organized into five academic research divisions. Beyond the arts and sciences, Chicago is also well known for its professional schools, which include the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Booth School of Business, the Law School, the School of Social Service Administration, the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, the Divinity School and the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, as well as the recently launched Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. The university has additional campuses and centers in London, Paris, Beijing, Delhi, and Hong Kong, as well as in downtown Chicago.
The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is a private doctorate-granting research university in Pasadena, California. Known for its strength in natural science and engineering, Caltech is often ranked as one of the world's top-ten universities. Although founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the college attracted influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910 and the college assumed its present name in 1921. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Kármán. The university is one among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States which is primarily devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences.
Dartmouth College (DART-m?th) is a private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is the ninth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded as a school to educate Native Americans in Christian theology and the English way of life, Dartmouth primarily trained Congregationalist ministers throughout its early history before it gradually secularized, emerging at the turn of the 20th century from relative obscurity into national prominence. Dartmouth comprises five constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Geisel School of Medicine, the Thayer School of Engineering, the Tuck School of Business, and the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies. The university also has affiliations with the Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center, the Rockefeller Institute for Public Policy, and the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
Johns Hopkins University is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, the university was named for its first benefactor, the American entrepreneur, abolitionist, and philanthropist Johns Hopkins. His $7 million bequest (approximately $144.5 million in today's dollars) of which half financed the establishment of Johns Hopkins Hospital was the largest philanthropic gift in the history of the United States up to that time. Daniel Coit Gilman, who was inaugurated as the institution's first president on February 22, 1876, led the university to revolutionize higher education in the U.S. by integrating teaching and research. Adopting the concept of a graduate school from Germany's ancient Heidelberg University, Johns Hopkins University is considered the first research university in the United States. Over the course of several decades, the university has led all U.S. universities in annual research and development expenditures. In fiscal year 2016, Johns Hopkins spent nearly $2.5 billion on research.
Northwestern University (NU) is a private research university based in Evanston, Illinois, United States, with other campuses located in Chicago and Doha, Qatar, and academic programs and facilities in Miami, Florida; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, California. Along with its selective undergraduate programs, Northwestern is known for its Kellogg School of Management, Pritzker School of Law, Feinberg School of Medicine, Bienen School of Music, Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Northwestern is a large research university with a comprehensive doctoral program, attracting nearly $800 million in sponsored research each year. As of 2018, Northwestern has the tenth-largest university endowment in the United States, valued at a record $11.08 billion. The university's former and present faculty and alumni include 19 Nobel Prize laureates, 38 Pulitzer Prize winners, six MacArthur Genius Fellows, 16 Rhodes Scholars and two Supreme Court Justices.
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1740, it is one of the nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence and the first institution of higher learning in the United States to refer to itself as a university. Benjamin Franklin, Penn's founder and first president, advocated an educational program that trained leaders in commerce, government, and public service, similar to a modern liberal arts curriculum. The university has four undergraduate schools as well as twelve graduate and professional schools. Among the university's professional and graduate schools are the first school of medicine in North America (Perelman School of Medicine, 1765), the first collegiate business school (Wharton School, 1881) and the first "student union" building and organization (Houston Hall, 1896). In 2018, the university had an endowment of $13.8 billion, the seventh largest endowment of all colleges in the United States, as well as an academic research budget of $966 million.
Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, it is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. At its foundation, Brown was the first college in the U.S. to accept students regardless of their religious affiliation. Its engineering program was established in 1847. It was one of the early doctoral-granting U.S. institutions in the late 19th century, adding masters and doctoral studies in 1887. In 1969, Brown adopted a New Curriculum sometimes referred to as the Brown Curriculum after a period of student lobbying. The New Curriculum eliminated mandatory "general education" distribution requirements, made students "the architects of their own syllabus" and allowed them to take any course for a grade of satisfactory or unrecorded no-credit. In 1971, Brown's coordinate women's institution, Pembroke College, was fully merged into the university; Pembroke Campus now includes dormitories and classrooms used by all of Brown.
Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of New York shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million endowment despite having never been to the South. Vanderbilt hoped that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the Civil War. Ranked at number 15 among United States research universities by U.S. News and World Report, Vanderbilt enrolls approximately 13,100 students from all 50 U.S. states and over 100 foreign countries in four undergraduate and six graduate and professional schools. The university is in the process of converting its residence halls into an academic residential college system. Several research centers and institutes are affiliated with the university, including the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, and Dyer Observatory. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, formerly part of the university, became a separate institution in 2016. Despite its urban surroundings, the campus itself is a national arboretum and features over 300 different species of trees and shrubs.
William Marsh Rice University, commonly known as Rice University, is a private research university in Houston, Texas. The university is situated on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and is adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Opened in 1912 after the murder of its namesake William Marsh Rice, Rice is now a research university with an undergraduate focus. Its emphasis on education is demonstrated by a small student body and 6:1 student-faculty ratio, and it has been nationally recognized as a leading university for undergraduate teaching. The university has a very high level of research activity, with $140.2 million in sponsored research funding in 2016. Rice is noted for its applied science programs in the fields of artificial heart research, structural chemical analysis, signal processing, space science, and nanotechnology. It was ranked first in the world in materials science research by the Times Higher Education (THE) in 2010. Rice is a member of the Association of American Universities.
The University of Virginia (U.Va. or UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was founded in 1819 by Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson. It is the flagship university of Virginia and home to Jefferson's Academical Village, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. UVA is known for its historic foundations, student-run honor code and secret societies. The original governing Board of Visitors included Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Monroe was the sitting President of the United States at the time of its foundation and earlier Presidents Jefferson and Madison were UVA's first two rectors. Jefferson conceived and designed the original courses of study and original architecture. UVA was the first university of the American South elected to the research-driven Association of American Universities in 1904. More than a century later, the journal Science credited UVA faculty with two of the top ten global scientific breakthroughs of 2015. The UVA offers 121 majors across the 08 UG and 03 professional schools.
The University of Michigan (UM, U-M, U of M, or UMich), often simply referred to as Michigan, is a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The university is Michigan's oldest; it was founded in 1817 in Detroit, as the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, 20 years before the territory became a state. The school was moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 onto 40 acres of what is now known as Central Campus. Since its establishment in Ann Arbor, the flagship university campus has expanded to include more than 584 major buildings with a combined area of more than 34 million gross square feet (780 acres; 3.2 km2) spread out over a Central Campus and North Campus, two regional campuses in Flint and Dearborn, and a Center in Detroit. The university is a founding member of the Association of American Universities.
Cornell University (kor-NEL) is a private and statutory Ivy League research university in Ithaca, New York. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, the university was intended to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge from the classics to the sciences, and from the theoretical to the applied. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's founding principle, a popular 1868 Ezra Cornell quotation: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." The university is broadly organized into 07 UG Colleges and 07 Graduate divisions at its main Ithaca campus, with each college and division defining its own admission standards and academic programs in near autonomy. Cornell is one of ten private land grant universities in the US and the only one in New York.
The University of Washington (commonly referred to as UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington was first established in downtown Seattle approximately a decade after the city's founding to aid its economic development. Today, the university's 703-acre main Seattle campus is situated in the University District above the Montlake Cut, within the urban Puget Sound region of the Pacific Northwest. The university has two additional campuses in Tacoma and Bothell. Overall, UW encompasses over 500 buildings and over 20 million gross square footage of space, including one of the largest library systems in the world with over 26 university libraries, as well as the UW Tower, lecture halls, art centers, museums, laboratories, stadiums, and conference centers. The university offers bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees through 140 departments in various colleges and schools, sees about 46,000 in total student enrollment every year, and functions on a quarter system.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison (also known as University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, regionally as UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public research university in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded when Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848, UW–Madison is the official state university of Wisconsin, and the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It was the first public university established in Wisconsin and remains the oldest and largest public university in the state. It became a land-grant institution in 1866. The 933-acre main campus, located on the shores of Lake Mendota, includes four National Historic Landmarks. The University also owns and operates a historic 1,200-acre arboretum established in 1932, located 4 miles (6.4 km) south of the main campus. UW–Madison is organized into 20 schools and colleges, which enrolled 30,361 undergraduate and 14,052 graduate students in 2018. Its comprehensive academic program offers 136 undergraduate majors, along with 148 master's degree programs and 120 doctoral programs.
The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and traces its origins to 1853 and has operated continuously on its Gainesville campus since September 1906. The University of Florida is the only member of the Association of American Universities in Florida. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". After the Florida state legislature's creation of performance standards in 2013, the Florida Board of Governors designated the University of Florida as one of the three "preeminent universities" among the twelve universities of the State University System of Florida. For 2020, U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida as the seventh (tied) best public university in the United States.
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment and the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke. Duke's campus spans over 8,600 acres on three contiguous sub-campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort. The university administers two concurrent schools in Asia, Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore (established in 2005) and Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China (established in 2013). As of 2019, 15 Nobel laureates and 3 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with the university. Duke alumni also include 46 Rhodes Scholars and 25 Churchill Scholars.
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, or UA) is a public research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885, the UA was the first university in the Arizona Territory. As of 2018, the university enrolls 45,217 students in 19 separate colleges/schools, including the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson and Phoenix and the James E. Rogers College of Law, and is affiliated with two academic medical centers (Banner - University Medical Center Tucson and Banner - University Medical Center Phoenix). The University of Arizona is governed by the Arizona Board of Regents. The University of Arizona is one of the elected members of the Association of American Universities and is the only representative from the state of Arizona to this group.
The University of Utah (also referred to as the U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. As the state's flagship university, it offers more than 100 UG majors and more than 92 Graduate degree programs. The university is classified among "Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity" with "selective, higher transfer-in" admissions. Graduate studies include the S.J. Quinney College of Law and the School of Medicine, Utah's first medical school. As of Fall 2018, there are 24,735 UG students and 8,251 Graduate students, for an enrollment total of 32,994. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest institution of higher education.
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880, it is the oldest private research university in California. For the 2018–19 academic year, there were 20,000 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs. USC is a highly selective school, accepting only 11% percent of undergraduate applicants for its class of 2023. USC also has 27,500 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, occupational therapy, pharmacy, and medicine. It is the largest private employer in the city of Los Angeles and generates $8 billion in economic impact on Los Angeles and California. USC was one of the earliest nodes on ARPANET and is the birthplace of the Domain Name System.
New York University (NYU) is a private research university based in New York City. Founded in 1831, NYU's historical campus is in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan. NYU also has degree-granting campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, and academic centers in Accra, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Florence, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Paris, Prague, Sydney, Tel Aviv, and Washington, D.C. Alumni include heads of state, royalty, eminent scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs, media figures, founders and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and astronauts. As of October 2019, 37 Nobel Laureates, 8 Turing Award winners, 5 Fields Medalists, over 30 Academy Award winners, over 30 Pulitzer Prize winners, and hundreds of members of the National Academies of Sciences and United States Congress have been affiliated as faculty or alumni.
Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has been historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The university has more than 3,900 faculty members and nearly 33,000 students, and is one of Boston's largest employers. It offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, doctorates, and medical, dental, business, and law degrees through 18 schools and colleges on two urban campuses. The main campus is situated along the Charles River in Boston's Fenway-Kenmore and Allston neighborhoods, while the Boston University Medical Campus is located in Boston's South End neighborhood.
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. The University of Texas was inducted into the Association of American Universities in 1929, becoming only the third university in the American South to be elected. The institution has the nation's eighth-largest single-campus enrollment, with over 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students and over 24,000 faculty and staff. A Public Ivy, it is a major center for academic research, with research expenditures exceeding $615 million for the 2016–2017 school year.
Purdue University is a public research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money to establish a college of science, technology, and agriculture in his name. The first classes were held on September 16, 1874, with six instructors and 39 students. The main campus in West Lafayette offers more than 200 majors for undergraduates, over 69 masters and doctoral programs, and professional degrees in pharmacy and veterinary medicine. In addition, Purdue has 18 intercollegiate sports teams and more than 900 student organizations. Purdue is a member of the Big Ten Conference and enrolls the second largest student body of any university in Indiana, as well as the fourth largest foreign student population of any university in the United States.
Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford University or Stanford) is a private research university in Stanford, California. Stanford is known for its academic achievements, wealth, close proximity to Silicon Valley, and selectivity; it ranks as one of the world's top universities. The university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was a U.S. Senator and former Governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The university is also one of the top fundraising institutions in the country.
