Yale University

Yale University is an American 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. The school was renamed Yale College in 1718 in recognition of a gift from Elihu Yale, who was governor of the British East India Company. Established to train Congregationalist ministers in theology and sacred languages, by 1777 the school's curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences. In the 19th century the school 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 fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and twelve 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.[7]The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States.

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.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, 5 Fields Medalists, 230 Rhodes Scholars, and 118 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the University.Much of Yale University's staff, including most maintenance staff, dining hall employees, and administrative staff, are unionized. Clerical and technical employees are represented by Local 34 of UNITE HERE and service and maintenance workers by Local 35 of the same international. Together with the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), an unrecognized union of graduate employees, Locals 34 and 35 make up the Federation of Hospital and University Employees. Also included in FHUE are the dietary workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital, who are members of 1199 SEIU.[71] In addition to these unions, officers of the Yale University Police Department are members of the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees Finally, Yale security officers voted to join the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in fall 2010 after the National Labor Relations Board ruled they could not join AFSCME; the Yale administration contested the election.le's central campus in downtown New Haven covers 260 acres (1.1 km2) and comprises its main, historic campus and a medical campus adjacent to the Yale-New Haven Hospital. In western New Haven, the university holds 500 acres (2.0 km2) of athletic facilities, including the Yale Golf Course.[79] In 2008, Yale purchased the 136-acre (0.55 km2) former Bayer Pharmaceutical campus in West Haven, Connecticut, the buildings of which are now used as laboratory and research space. Yale also owns seven forests in Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire—the largest of which is the 7,840-acre (31.7 km2) Yale-Myers Forest in Connecticut's Quiet Corner—and nature preserves including Horse Island.

Stanford University

tanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University  is a private research university in Stanford, California, and one of the world's most prestigious institutions. 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, 1891 as 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.campus is one of the largest in the United States.[note 1] 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 Pac-12 Conference. It has gained 108 NCAA team championships,the second-most for a university, 476 individual championships, the most in Division I,[29] and has won the NACDA Directors' Cup, recognizing the university with the best overall athletic team achievement, every year since 1994–1995Stanford faculty and alumni have founded many companies including Google, Hewlett-PackaNike, Sun Microsystems, Instagram, Snapchat, 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.[31] It is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires, 17 astronauts, and 20 Turing Award laureates.[note 3] It is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress.

Foundationtanford was founded by Leland Stanford, a railroad magnate, U.S. senator, and former California governor, together with his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford. It is named in honor of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who died in 1884 from typhoid fever just before his 16th birthday. His parents decided to dedicate a university to their only son, and Leland Stanford told his wife, "The children of California shall be our children.The Stanfords visited Harvard's president, Charles Eliot, and asked whether he should establish a university, technical school or museum. Eliot replied that he should found a university and an endowment of $5 million would suffice (in 1884 dollars; about $132 million today. "The Trustees … shall have the power and it shall be their duty:

To establish and maintain at such University an educational system, which will, if followed, fit the graduate for some useful pursuit, and to this end to cause the pupils, as easily as may be, to declare the particular calling, which, in life, they may desire to pursue; …

To prohibit sectarian instruction, but to have taught in the University the immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise and benevolent Creator, and that obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man.To have taught in the University the right and advantages of association and co-operation.

To afford equal facilities and give equal advantages in the University to both sexes.

To maintain on the Palo Alto estate a farm for instruction in agriculture in all its branches."

Though the trustees are in overall charge of the university, Leland and Jane Stanford as Founders retained great control until their deaths.Despite the duty to have a co-educational institution in 1899 Jane Stanford, the remaining Founder, added to the Founding Grant the legal requirement that "the number of women attending the University as students shall at no time ever exceed five hundred". She feared the large numbers of women entering would lead the school to become "the Vassar of the West" and felt that would not be an appropriate memorial for her son. In 1933 the requirement was reinterpreted by the trustees to specify an undergraduate male:female ratio of 3:1.[59] The "Stanford ratio" of 3:1 remained in place until the early 1960s. By the late 1960s the "ratio" was about 2:1 for undergraduates, but much more skewed at the graduate level, except in the humanities. In 1973 the University trustees successfully petitioned the courts to have the restriction formally removed. As of 2014 the undergraduate enrollment is split nearly evenly between the sexes (47.2% women, 52.8% men), though males outnumber females (38.2% women, 61.8% men) at the graduate level.The biological sciences department evolved rapidly from 1946 to 1972 as its research focus changed, due to the Cold War and other historically significant conditions external to academia. Stanford science went through three phases of experimental direction during that time. In the early 1950s the department remained fixed in the classical independent and self-directed research mode, shunning interdisciplinary collaboration and excessive government funding. Between the 1950s and mid-1960s biological research shifted focus to the molecular level. Then, from the late 1960s onward, Stanford's goal became applying research and findings toward humanistic ends. Each phase was preempted by larger social issues, such as the escalation of the Cold War, the launch of Sputnik, and public concern over medical abuses.

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 Colonies and 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.[12] 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, 21 National Medal of Science winners, 14 Fields Medalists, the most Abel Prize winners and Fields Medalists (at the time of award) of any university (five and eight, respectively), 10 Turing Award laureates, five National Humanities Medal recipients, 209 Rhodes Scholars, and 126 Marshall Scholars.[14] 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.[quantify] 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 best universities in the world.New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey in 1746 in order to train ministers. The college was the educational and religious capital of Scots-Irish America. In 1754, trustees of the College of New Jersey suggested that, in recognition of Governor's interest, Princeton should be named as Belcher College. Gov. Jonathan Belcher replied: "What a hell of a name that would be!In 1756, the college moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Its home in Princeton was Nassau Hall, named for the royal House of Orange-Nassau of William III of England.Following the untimely deaths of Princeton's first five presidents, John Witherspoon became president in 1768 and remained in that office until his death in 1794. During his presidency, Witherspoon shifted the college's focus from training ministers to preparing a new generation for leadership in the new American nation. To this end, he tightened academic standards and solicited investment in the college.Witherspoon's presidency constituted a long period of stability for the college, interrupted by the American Revolution and particularly the Battle of Princeton, during which British soldiers briefly occupied Nassau Hall; American forces, led by George Washington, fired cannon on the building to rout them from it.John Witherspoon, President of the College (1768-94), signer of the Declaration of IndependenceIn 1812, the eighth president the College of New Jersey, Ashbel Green (1812–23), helped establish the Princeton Theological Seminary next door.[19] The plan to extend the theological curriculum met with "enthusiastic approval on the part of the authorities at the College of New Jersey".[20] Today, Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary maintain separate institutions with ties that include services such as cross-registration and mutual library access.Before the construction of Stanhope Hall in 1803, Nassau Hall was the college's sole building. The cornerstone of the building was laid on September 17, 1754.During the summer of 1783, the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall, making Princeton the country's capital for four months. Over the centuries and through two redesigns following major fires (1802 and 1855), Nassau Hall's role shifted from an all-purpose building, comprising office, dormitory, library, and classroom space; to classroom space exclusively; to its present role as the administrative center of the University. The class of 1879 donated twin lion sculptures that flanked the entrance until 1911, when that same class replaced them with tigers.  1969, Princeton University first admitted women as undergraduates. In 1887, the university actually maintained and staffed a sister college, Evelyn College for Women, in the town of Princeton on Evelyn and Nassau streets. It was closed after roughly a decade of operation. After abortive discussions with Sarah Lawrence College to relocate the women's college to Princeton and merge it with the University in 1967, the administration decided to admit women and turned to the issue of transforming the school's operations and facilities into a female-friendly campus. The administration had barely finished these plans in April 1969 when the admissions office began mailing out its acceptance letters. Its five-year coeducation plan provided $7.8 million for the development of new facilities that would eventually house and educate 650 women students at Princeton by 1974. Ultimately, 148 women, consisting of 100 freshmen and transfer students of other years, entered Princeton on September 6, 1969 amidst much media attention. Princeton enrolled its first female graduate student, Sabra Follett Meservey, as a PhD candidate in Turkish history in 1961. A handful of undergraduate women had studied at Princeton from 1963 on, spending their junior year there to study "critical languages" in which Princeton's offerings surpassed those of their home institutions. They were considered regular students for their year on campus, but were not candidates for a Princeton degree As a result of a 1979 lawsuit by Sally Frank, Princeton's eating clubs were required to go coeducational in 1991, after Tiger Inn's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied.

The Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. Researchers worked on computers, radar, and inertial guidance during World War II and the Cold War. Post-war defense research contributed to the rapid expansion of the faculty and campus under James Killian. The current 168-acre (68.0 ha) campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 mile (1.6 km) along the northern bank of the Charles River basin.

MIT, with five schools and one college which contain a total of 32 departments, is often cited as among the world's top universities.he Institute is traditionally known for its research and education in the physical sciences and engineering, and more recently in biology, economics, linguistics, and management as well. The "Engineers" sponsor 31 sports, most teams of which compete in the NCAA Division III's New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference; the Division I rowing programs compete as part of the EARC and EAWRC.As of 2015, 85 Nobel laureates, 52 National Medal of Science recipients, 65 Marshall Scholars, 45 Rhodes Scholars, 38 MacArthur Fellows, 34 astronauts, 19 Turing award winners, and 6 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT. The school has a strong entrepreneurial culture, and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the eleventh-largest economy in the world.CampusMIT's 168-acre (68.0 ha) campus in the city of Cambridge spans approximately a mile along the north side of the Charles River basin.[5] The campus is divided roughly in half by Massachusetts Avenue, with most dormitories and student life facilities to the west and most academic buildings to the east. The bridge closest to MIT is the Harvard Bridge, which is known for being marked off in a non-standard unit of length – the smoot The Kendall MBTA Red Line station is located on the northeastern edge of the campus, in Kendall Square. The Cambridge neighborhoods surrounding MIT are a mixture of high tech companies occupying both modern office and rehabilitated industrial buildings, as well as socio-economically diverse residential neighborhoods. In early 2016, MIT presented its updated Kendall Square Initiative to the City of Cambridge, with plans for mixed-use educational, retail, residential, startup incubator, and office space in a dense high-rise transit-oriented development plan.[99][100] The MIT Museum will eventually be moved immediately adjacent to a Kendall Square subway entrance, joining the List Visual Arts Center on the eastern end of the campus.

Each building at MIT has a number (possibly preceded by a W, N, E, or NW) designation and most have a name as well. Typically, academic and office buildings are referred to primarily by number while residence halls are referred to by name. The organization of building numbers roughly corresponds to the order in which the buildings were built and their location relative (north, west, and east) to the original center cluster of Maclaurin buildings.[102] Many of the buildings are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of underground tunnels, providing protection from the Cambridge weather as well as a venue for roof and tunnel hacking.

MIT's on-campus nuclear reactor.

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts (US), established 1636, whose history, influence and wealth have made it one of the world's most prestigious universities Established originally by the Massachusetts legislature and soon thereafter named for John Harvard (its first benefactor), Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning and the Harvard Corporation (formally, the President and Fellows of Harvard College) is its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites.  Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.[15] James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College The University is organized into eleven separate academic units—ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area:[16] its 209-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Boston; the business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are in the Longwood Medical Area.[17] Harvard's $37.6 billion financial endowment is the largest of any academic institution.Harvard is a large, highly residential research university.[18] The nominal cost of attendance is high, but the University's large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages.[19] It operates several arts, cultural, and scientific museums, alongside the Harvard Library, which is the world's largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries with over 18 million volumes.Harvard's alumni include eight U.S. presidents, several foreign heads of state, 62 living billionaires, 335 Rhodes Scholars, and 242 Marshall Scholars. Harvard was formed in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was initially called "New College" or "the college at New Towne". In 1638, the college became home for North America's first known printing press, carried by the ship John of London. In the early years the College trained many Puritan ministers.[citation needed] (A 1643 publication said the school's purpose was "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. The leading Boston divine Increase Mather served as president from 1685 to 1701. In 1708, John Leverett became the first president who was not also a clergyman, which marked a turning of the college toward intellectual independence from Puritanism.CAMPUSHarvard's 209-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, about 3 miles (5 km) west-northwest of the State House in downtown Boston, and extends into the surrounding Harvard Square neighborhood. Harvard Yard itself contains the central administrative offices and main libraries of the university, academic buildings including Sever Hall and University Hall, Memorial Church, and the majority of the freshman dormitories. Sophomore, junior, and senior undergraduates live in twelve residential Houses, nine of which are south of Harvard Yard along or near the Charles River. The other three are located in a residential neighborhood half a mile northwest of the Yard at the Quadrangle (commonly referred to as the Quad), which formerly housed Radcliffe College students until Radcliffe merged its residential system with Harvard. Each residential house contains rooms for undergraduates, House masters, and resident tutors, as well as a dining hall and library. The facilities were made possible by a gift from Yale University alumnus Edward Harkness.Radcliffe Yard, formerly the center of the campus of Radcliffe College (and now home of the Radcliffe Institute), is adjacent to the Graduate School of Education and the Cambridge Common.

The Harvard Business School and many of the university's athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located on a 358-acre (145 ha) campus opposite the Cambridge campus in Allston. The John W. Weeks Bridge is a pedestrian bridge over the Charles River connecting both campuses. The Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and the Harvard School of Public Health are located on a 21-acre (8.5 ha) campus in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area approximately 3.3 miles (5.3 km) southwest of downtown Boston and 3.3 miles (5.3 km) south of the Cambridge campus.

Columbia University

Columbia University is a private, Ivy League, research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. Columbia is the oldest college in New York State and the fifth chartered institution of higher learning in the country, making it one of nine colonial colleges founded before the Declaration of Independence.[6] After the revolutionary war, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. A 1787 charter placed the institution under a private board of trustees before it was renamed Columbia University in 1896 when the campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights occupying land of 32 acres (13 ha).Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities, and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree The university is organized into twenty schools, including Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of General Studies. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción and Nairobi It has affiliations with several other institutions nearby, including Teachers College, Barnard College, and Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Sciences Po Paris,and the Juilliard School. Morningside Heights[edit]College WalkThe majority of Columbia's graduate and undergraduate studies are conducted in Morningside Heights on Seth Low's late-19th century vision of a university campus where all disciplines could be taught in one location. The campus was designed along Beaux-Arts principles by architects McKim, Mead, and White. Columbia's main campus occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres (13 ha), in Morningside Heights, New York City, a neighborhood that contains a number of academic institutions. The university owns over 7,800 apartments in Morningside Heights, housing faculty, graduate students, and staff. Almost two dozen undergraduate dormitories (purpose-built or converted) are located on campus or in Morningside Heights.[8] Columbia University has an extensive underground tunnel system more than a century old, with the oldest portions predating the present campus. Some of these remain accessible to the public, while others have been cordoned off..

The Nicholas Murray Butler Library, commonly known simply as Butler Library, is the largest single library in the Columbia University Library System, and is one of the largest buildings on the campus. Proposed as "South Hall" by the university's former President Nicholas Murray Butler as expansion plans for Low Memorial Library stalled, the new library was funded by Edward Harkness, benefactor of Yale's residential college system, and designed by his favorite architect, James Gamble Rogers. It was completed in 1934 and renamed for Butler in 1946. The library design is neo-classical in style. Its facade features an arcade of columns in the Ionic order above which are inscribed the names of great writers, philosophers, and thinkers, most of whom are read by students engaged in the Core Curriculum of Columbia College.

As of 2012, Columbia's library system includes over 11.9  million volumes, making it the eighth largest library system and fifth largest collegiate library system in the United States.

Several buildings on the Morningside Heights campus are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Low Memorial Library, a National Historic Landmark and the centerpiece of the campus, is listed for its architectural significance. Philosophy Hall is listed as the site of the invention of FM radio. Also listed is Pupin Hall, another National Historic Landmark, which houses the physics and astronomy departments. Here the first experiments on the fission of uranium were conducted by Enrico Fermi. The uranium atom was split there ten days after the world's first atom-splitting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

A statue by sculptor Daniel Chester French called Alma Mater is centered on the front steps of Low Memorial Library. McKim, Mead & White invited French to build the sculpture in order to harmonize with the larger composition of the court and library in the center of the campus. Draped in an academic gown, the female figure of Alma Mater wears a crown of laurels and sits on a throne. The scroll-like arms of the throne end in lamps, representing sapientia and doctrina. A book signifying knowledge, balances on her lap, and an owl, the attribute of wisdom, is hidden in the folds of her gown. Her right hand holds a scepter composed of four sprays of wheat, terminating with a crown of King's College which refers to Columbia's origin as a Royalist institution in 1754. A local actress named Mary Lawton was said to have posed for parts of the sculpture. The statue was dedicated on September 23, 1903, as a gift of Mr. & Mrs. Robert Goelet, and was originally covered in golden leaf. During the Columbia University protests of 1968 a bomb damaged the sculpture, but it has since been repaired.

The Steps", alternatively known as "Low Steps" or the "Urban Beach", are a popular meeting area for Columbia students. The term refers to the long series of granite steps leading from the lower part of campus (South Field) to its upper terrace. With a design inspired by the City Beautiful movement, the steps of Low Library provides Columbia University and Barnard College students, faculty, and staff with a comfortable outdoor platform and space for informal gatherings, events, and ceremonies. McKim's classical facade epitomizes late 19th century new-classical designs, with its columns and portico marking the entrance to an important structure.