University of Chicago

The University of Chicago (U of C, Chicago, or UChicago) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois and one of the world's leading and influential institutions of higher learning, with top ten positions in numerous rankings and measures.

The university, established in 1890, consists of The College, various graduate programs, interdisciplinary committees organized into four academic research divisions and seven professional schools. Beyond the arts and sciences, Chicago is also well known for its professional schools, which include the Pritzker School of Medicine, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the Law School, the School of Social Service Administration, the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies and the Divinity School. The university currently enrolls approximately 5,000 students in the College and around 15,000 students overall.

University of Chicago scholars have played a major role in the development of various academic disciplines, including: the Chicago school of economics, the Chicago school of sociology, the law and economics movement in legal analysis, the Chicago school of literary criticism, the Chicago school of religion, and the behavioralism school of political science.Chicago's physics department helped develop the world's first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction beneath the university's Stagg Field.Chicago's research pursuits have been aided by unique affiliations with world-renowned institutions like the nearby Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory, as well as the Marine Biological Laboratory. The university is also home to the University of Chicago Press, the largest university press in the United States. With an estimated completion date of 2020, the Barack Obama Presidential Center will be housed at the University of Chicago and include both the Obama presidential library and offices of the Obama Foundation.

Founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and wealthiest man in history John D. Rockefeller, the University of Chicago was incorporated in 1890; William Rainey Harper became the university's first president in 1891, and the first classes were held in 1892. Both Harper and future president Robert Maynard Hutchins advocated for Chicago's curriculum to be based upon theoretical and perennial issues rather than on applied sciences and commercial utility. With Harper's vision in mind, the University of Chicago also became one of the 14 founding members of the Association of American Universities, an international organization of leading research universities, in 1900.

The University of Chicago is home to many prominent alumni. 89 Nobel laureateshave been affiliated with the university as visiting professors, students, faculty, or staff, the fourth most of any institution in the world. In addition, Chicago's alumni include 49 Rhodes Scholars,21 Marshall Scholars, 9 Fields Medalists,13 National Humanities Medalists, 13 billionaire graduates, and a plethora of members of the United States Congress and heads of state of countries all over the world.

Yale University

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in Saybrook Colony as the Collegiate School, the University is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. In 1718, the school was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company and in 1731 received a further gift of land and slaves from Bishop Berkeley.Established to train Congregationalist ministers in theology and sacred languages, by 1777 the school's curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences and in the 19th century gradually incorporated graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph.D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887.

Yale is organized into twelve constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and ten professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the University owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, including the Yale Bowl, a campus in West Haven, Connecticut, and forest and nature preserves throughout New England. The university's assets include an endowment valued at $25.6 billion as of September 2015, the second largest of any educational institution in the world.

Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.The Yale University Library, serving all twelve schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Outside of academic studies, students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League.

Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 13 living billionaires,and many foreign heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of Congress and many high-level U.S. diplomats, including former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State John Kerry. 52 Nobel laureates, 230 Rhodes Scholars, and 118 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the University.

Imperial College London

Imperial College London is a public research university in the United Kingdom.It was founded by Prince Albert who envisioned an area composed of the Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Albert Hall and the Imperial Institute. The Imperial Institute was opened by his wife, Queen Victoria, who laid the first stone. In 1907, Imperial College London was formed by Royal Charter, and soon joined the University of London, with a focus on science and technology.The college has expanded its coursework to medicine through mergers with St Mary's Hospital. In 2004, Queen Elizabeth II opened the Imperial College Business School.[10] Imperial became an independent university from the University of London during its one hundred year anniversary.

Imperial is organised into faculties of science, engineering, medicine and business. Its main campus is located in South Kensington, adjacent to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens in central London. The university formed the first academic health science centre in the United Kingdom.Imperial is a member of the Russell Group, G5, Association of Commonwealth Universities, League of European Research Universities, and the "Golden Triangle" of British universities.

Imperial is included among the best universities in the world by numerous university rankings.According to The New York Times, recruiters consider its students among the 10 most valued graduates in the world.Imperial faculty and alumni include 15 Nobel laureates, 2 Fields Medalists, 70 Fellows of the Royal Society, 82 Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering and 78 Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

University of California

The University of California (UC) is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-system public higher education plan, which also includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges System.

Governed by a semi-autonomous Board of Regents, the University of California has 10 campuses, a combined student body of 238,700 students, 19,700 faculty members, 135,900 staff members and over 1.6 million living alumni as of spring 2015.

Its first campus, UC Berkeley, was founded in 1868, while its tenth and newest campus, UC Merced, opened for classes in fall 2005. Nine campuses enroll both undergraduate and graduate students; one campus, UC San Francisco, enrolls only graduate and professional students in the medical and health sciences. In addition, the UC Hastings College of Law, located in San Francisco, shares the "UC" name but is otherwise effectively unaffiliated with the UC system.

The University of California's campuses boast large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every field and it is widely regarded as one of the top university systems in the world. The University of California has won the highest number of Nobel Prizes in totality. Seven of its undergraduate campuses are ranked among the top 100, six among the top 50, and two among the top 25 U.S. national universities for 2015, public or private, by U.S. News & World Report. Among public schools, two of its undergraduate campuses are ranked in the top 5 (UC Berkeley at 1 and UCLA at 2), five in the top 10 (UC Santa Barbara at 8, UC Irvine and UC San Diego tied at 9, and all except the newly opened UC Merced in the top 100 (UC Davis at 11, UC Santa Cruz at 34, UC Riverside at 58, U.S. News & World Report Rankings 2016[5]). UC Berkeley is ranked third worldwide among public and private universities and two others—UCLA and UC San Diego—are ranked among the top 15 by the Academic Ranking of World Universities.

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton was the fourth chartered institution of higher education in the Thirteen Coloniesand thus one of the nine Colonial Colleges established before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark in 1747, then to the current site nine years later, where it was renamed Princeton University in 1896.

Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering.It offers professional degrees through the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Architecture and the Bendheim Center for Finance. The University has ties with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Westminster Choir College of Rider University. Princeton has the largest endowment per student in the United States.

The University has graduated many notable alumni. It has been associated with 41 Nobel laureates, 17 National Medal of Science winners, the most Abel Prize winners and Fields Medalists of any university (four and eight, respectively), ten Turing Award laureates, five National Humanities Medal recipients, 209 Rhodes Scholars, and 126 Marshall Scholars. Two U.S. Presidents, 12 U.S. Supreme Court Justices (three of whom currently serve on the court), and numerous living billionaires and foreign heads of state are all counted among Princeton's alumni. Princeton has also graduated many prominent members of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Cabinet, including eight Secretaries of State, three Secretaries of Defense, and two of the past four Chairs of the Federal Reserve. It is consistently ranked as one of the top universities in the world.

Stanford University

Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, and one of the world's most prestigious institutions,with the top position in numerous rankings and measures in the United States.

Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford, former Governor of and U.S. Senator from California and leading railroad tycoon, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford admitted its first students on October 1, 1891as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Tuition was free until 1920. The university struggled financially after Leland Stanford's 1893 death and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley. By 1970, Stanford was home to a linear accelerator, and was one of the original four ARPANET nodes (precursor to the Internet).

The main campus is in northern Santa Clara Valley adjacent to Palo Alto and between San Jose and San Francisco. Stanford also has land and facilities elsewhere. Its 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) campus is one of the largest in the United States.The university is also one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.

Stanford's academic strength is broad with 40 departments in the three academic schools that have undergraduate students and another four professional schools. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pacific-12 Conference. It has gained 108 NCAA team championships,the second-most for a university, 476 individual championships, the most in Division I, and has won the NACDA Directors' Cup, recognizing the university with the best overall athletic team achievement, every year since 1994-1995.

Stanford faculty and alumni have founded many companies including Google, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, Sun Microsystems, Instagram and Yahoo!, and companies founded by Stanford alumni generate more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, equivalent to the 10th-largest economy in the world.It is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires, 17 astronauts, and 18 Turing Award laureates.It is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress.The University has affiliated with 59 Nobel laureates and 2 Fields Medalists (when awarded).

Throop University

Caltech started as a vocational school founded in Pasadena in 1891 by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop. The school was known successively as Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute (and Manual Training School),and Throop College of Technology, before acquiring its current name in 1920. The vocational school was disbanded and the preparatory program was split off to form an independent Polytechnic School in 1907.

At a time when scientific research in the United States was still in its infancy, George Ellery Hale, a solar astronomer from the University of Chicago, founded the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904. He joined Throop's board of trustees in 1907, and soon began developing it and the whole of Pasadena into a major scientific and cultural destination. He engineered the appointment of James A. B. Scherer, a literary scholar untutored in science but a capable administrator and fund raiser, to Throop's presidency in 1908. Scherer persuaded retired businessman and trustee Charles W. Gates to donate $25,000 in seed money to build Gates Laboratory, the first science building on campus.