Northwestern Institution is a private research university that is situated in Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern University, one of the most esteemed academic institutions in the world and the oldest authorized university in Illinois, was founded in 1851.
The Illinois General Assembly formed Northwestern in 1851 to provide services to the former Northwest Territory. The university, which was formerly affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, eventually became nonsectarian. By 1900, the institution was ranked third among American institutions. In 1896, Northwestern joined the Big Ten Conference as a founding member. In 1917, it joined the Association of American Universities.
Northwestern Institution is a private research university that is situated in Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern University, one of the most esteemed academic institutions in the world and the oldest authorized university in Illinois, was founded in 1851.
The Illinois General Assembly formed Northwestern in 1851 to provide services to the former Northwest Territory. The university, which was formerly affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, eventually became nonsectarian. By 1900, the institution was ranked third among American institutions. In 1896, Northwestern joined the Big Ten Conference as a founding member. In 1917, it joined the Association of American Universities.
Northwestern has one of the greatest university endowments in the world, with a $2.5 billion yearly budget and a $16.1 billion endowment. In the fall of 2021, the institution had 23,410 students enrolled, 8,817 of them were undergraduates and 14,593 were graduate students. There are eight men’s and eleven women’s sports teams that compete as the Northwestern Wildcats on behalf of the school in the NCAA Division I Big Ten Conference. Since 1946, Northwestern has been the conference’s sole private institution.
Among the former and present members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences are 94 members, two Fields Medalists, 23 Nobel Prize laureates, 43 Pulitzer Prize winners, 23 MacArthur Fellows, 28 Marshall Scholars, 19 Rhodes Scholars, and ten living billionaires.
Nine eminent Chicago businessmen, methodist leaders, and lawyers convened on May 31, 1850, and it was at this meeting that Northwestern University was founded with the goal of serving the Northwest Territory, which was called such from 1787 to 1803. The Trustees of the North-Western Institution received a charter from the Illinois General Assembly on January 28, 1851, making it the first university to receive a charter in Illinois. The school’s nine founders, all Methodists, began their first organizational meeting by kneeling in prayer and worship. They supported a non-sectarian admissions policy, believing that Northwestern should serve all people in the newly emerging territory by enhancing the economy, despite the university’s affiliation with the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The second structure built on campus, University Hall (1869), is the oldest one currently standing.
The city of Evanston, Illinois, was planned by Philo Judson after its founder John Evans purchased 379 acres of land along Lake Michigan in 1853. Old College, the earliest structure, debuted on November 5, 1855. Northwestern sold $100 “perpetual scholarships” that gave the buyer and his successors’ access to free tuition as a way to pay for the building’s development. One of the few structures in the heart of Chicago that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was University Hall, which was constructed in 1869 using the same Joliet limestone as the Chicago Water Tower.
The undergraduate schools, graduate school, and Kellogg School of Management are all located on Northwestern’s Evanston campus, which stretches north-south along Sheridan Road from Lincoln Avenue to Clark Street west of Lake Michigan. The fraternity quads, Henry Crown Sports Pavilion, Norris Aquatics Center, Technological Institute, Dearborn Observatory, Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Hall for Nanofabrication and Molecular Self-Assembly, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center, and other facilities are all located on North Campus. The university’s humanities buildings, musical structures like the Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, and the sorority quads are all located on South Campus. The institution added 84 acres to the campus in the 1960s.
Northwestern Institution is a sizable residential research university that consistently ranks among the best in the country. The university is a top institution for studying chemistry, business, economics, education, journalism, and communications as well as materials engineering. It is important in both law and medicine. The institution provides 124 undergraduate programs and 145 graduate and professional programs. It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and the national professional associations for chemistry, psychology, business, education, journalism, music, engineering, law, and medicine. In 2012–2013, Northwestern awarded 4,444 professional degrees, 3,272 master’s degrees, 2,190 bachelor’s degrees, and 3,190 doctoral degrees. Northwestern University has granted 520 honorary degrees since 1951. Academic honor organizations including Phi Beta Kappa, Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and others have chapters at Northwestern.
U.S. News & World Report classifies Northwestern’s admissions as being among the “most selective” of all American universities. For the Class of 2025, Northwestern received a total of 47,633 applications. 3,239 students were accepted, for a 6.8% acceptance rate. The interquartile range on the post-2016 SAT was a combined 1450-1550 out of 1600 for the Class of 2023. The middle 50% of test takers received ACT composite scores that ranged from 33 to 35 out of 36, and 92% of them placed in the top ten percent of their high school classes.
In April 2016, Northwestern joined the Chicago Star Partnership, a City Colleges program focused on expanding opportunities for students in the city’s public colleges, as one of 15 Illinois universities.
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