Northwestern University

Northwestern University (NU) is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest chartered university in Illinois. The university has its main campus along the shores of Lake Michigan in the Chicago metropolitan area. Chartered by the Illinois General Assembly in 1851, Northwestern was initially affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church but later became non-sectarian. By 1900, the university was the third largest university in the United States. Northwestern became a founding member of the Big Ten Conference in 1896 and joined the Association of American Universities as an early member in 1917. Northwestern is composed of eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, which include the Kellogg School of Management, the Pritzker School of Law, the Feinberg School of Medicine, the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the Bienen School of Music, the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Medill School of Journalism, the School of Communication, the School of Professional Studies, the School of Education and Social Policy, and The Graduate School. Northwestern has additional campuses in downtown Chicago, Coral Gables, San Francisco, Doha, and Washington, D.C. As of 2022, the university maintains an endowment of $16.1 billion and an annual budget of around $2.9 billion. The university has research funding of over $1 billion. The university's intercollegiate athletic teams, collectively known as the Northwestern Wildcats, compete in the NCAA Division I Big Ten Conference, of which the university is a founding member. As of September 2020, 33 Nobel Prize laureates and 2 Fields Medalists, have been affiliated with Northwestern as alumni or faculty. In addition, Northwestern has been associated with 45 Pulitzer Prize winners, 23 National Medal of Science winners, 11 National Humanities Medal recipients, 23 MacArthur Fellows, 19 Rhodes Scholars, and 28 Marshall Scholars. Northwestern alumni also include 10 living billionaires, 2 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and 24 Olympic medalists.