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 is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. To further complicate the comparison of founding dates, a Log College was operated by William and Gilbert Tennent, the Presbyterian ministers, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, from 1726 until 1746 and it was once common to assert a formal connection between it and the College of New Jersey, which would justify Princeton pushing its founding date back to 1726. However, Princeton has never done so and a Princeton historian says that the facts "do not warrant" such an interpretation. Columbia University was chartered and began collegiate classes in 1754. Columbia considers itself to be the fifth institution of higher learning in the United States, based upon its charter date of 1754 and Penn's charter date of 1755.}} The institution moved to Newark in 1747 and then to its Mercer County campus in Princeton nine years later. It officially became a university in 1896 and was subsequently renamed Princeton University.

The university is governed by the Trustees of Princeton University and has an endowment of $37.7 billion, the largest endowment per student in the United States. Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering to approximately 8,500 students on its main campus spanning within the borough of Princeton. It offers postgraduate degrees through the Princeton 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 also manages the Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and is home to the NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and has one of the largest university libraries in the world.

Princeton uses a residential college system and is known for its eating clubs for juniors and seniors. The university has over 500 student organizations. Princeton students embrace a wide variety of traditions from both the past and present. The university is an NCAA Division I school and competes in the Ivy League. The school's athletic team, the Princeton Tigers, has won the most titles in its conference and has sent many students and alumni to the Olympics.

As of July 2025, 79 Nobel laureates, 16 Fields Medalists and 17 Turing Award laureates have been affiliated with Princeton University as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. In addition, Princeton has been associated with 21 National Medal of Science awardees, 5 Abel Prize awardees, 11 National Humanities Medal recipients, 217 Rhodes Scholars, 137 Marshall Scholars, and 62 Gates Cambridge Scholars. Two U.S. presidents, twelve U.S. Supreme Court justices (three of whom serve on the court ) and numerous living industry and media tycoons and foreign heads of state are all counted among Princeton's alumni body. Princeton has graduated many members of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Cabinet, including eight secretaries of state, three secretaries of defense and two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Provided by Wikipedia