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Princeton University is a coeducational private university located in Princeton, New Jersey.

According to the university, it is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the U.S.Princeton, Rutgers, and Columbia were founded within a few years of each other. Princeton appears to be the fourth institution to conduct classes, based on dates that do not seem to be in dispute. Based on founding date, Princeton and Penn both claim to be "fourth oldest." Penn once used 1749 as its founding date, making it fifth, but in 1899, Penn’s Trustees adopted a resolution that established 1740 as the founding date. See [Building Penn's Brand] for background, and [Princeton vs. Penn: Which is the Older Institution?] for Princeton's view. A "Log College" was operated by a Presbyterian minister in Bucks County, Pennsylvania from 1726 until 1746; some have suggested a connection between it and the College of New Jersey, which would justify Princeton pushing its founding date back to 1726. Princeton, however, has never done so and a Princeton historian says that the facts "do not warrant" such an interpretation. [link]. and is one of the eight Ivy League universities. Originally founded at Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it was relocated to Princeton in 1756 and renamed "Princeton University" in 1896.

Princeton has traditionally focused on undergraduate education and academic research, though in recent decades it has increased its focus on graduate education and now offers a large number of top-rated professional Master's degrees and PhD programs in a range of subjects. At over eleven million volumes, its library is among the world's largest university libraries. Among many others, areas of research include anthropology, geophysics, entomology, and robotics, while the Forrestal Campus has special facilities for the study of plasma physics and meteorology.

Originally a Presbyterian institution, Princeton is now non-sectarian and makes no religious demands on its students.Compulsory chapel attendance was reduced from twice a day in 1882 and abolished in 1964: http://etcweb1.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/mfs/05/Companion/university_chapel.html?15#mfsThe university has ties with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary and the Westminster Choir College of Rider University.Both Princeton Theological Seminary and Westminster Choir College maintain cross-registration programs with Princeton.

Contents

History

The College of New Jersey

Established by the “New Light" Presbyterians, Princeton was originally intended to train Presbyterian ministers. The college opened at Elizabeth, New Jersey, under the presidency of Jonathan Dickinson as the College of New Jersey. (It was proposed to name it for the colonial Governor, Jonathan Belcher, but he declined.) Its second president was Aaron Burr, Sr.; the third was Jonathan Edwards. In 1756 the college moved to Princeton, New Jersey.

From the time of the move to Princeton in 1756 until the construction of Sir Henry Rutgers Hall in 1803, the University's sole building was Nassau Hall, named for William III of England of the House of Orange-Nassau. The University also got one of its colors, orange, from William III. During the American Revolution, Princeton was occupied by both sides, and the college's buildings were heavily damaged. The Battle of Princeton, fought in a nearby field in January of 1777, proved to be a decisive victory for General George Washington and his troops. Two of Princeton's leading citizens signed the Declaration of Independence, and during the summer of 1783, the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall, making Princeton the country's capital for four months. The much-abused landmark survived bombardment with cannonballs in the Revolutionary War when General Washington struggled to wrest the building from British control, as well as later fires that left only its walls standing 1802 and 1855. Rebuilt by Joseph Henry Latrobe, John Notman, and John Witherspoon, the modern Nassau Hall has been much revised and expanded from the Robert Smith-designed original. Over the centuries, its role shifted from an all-purpose building, comprising office, dormitory, library, and classroom space, to classrooms only, to its present role as the administrative center of the university. Originally, the sculptures in front of the building were lions, as a gift in 1879. These were later replaced with tigers in 1911.[Princeton Companion]

The Princeton Theological Seminary was separated from Princeton in 1812, since the Presbyterians wanted their ministers to have more theological training, while the faculty and students would have been content with less. This reduced the student body and the external support for Princeton for some time. The two institutions currently enjoy a close relationship based on common history and shared resources.

Nassau Hall, the University's oldest building. Note the tiger sculptures beside the steps (See discussion above).
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Nassau Hall, the University's oldest building. Note the tiger sculptures beside the steps (See discussion above).

The university was becoming an obscure backwater when President James McCosh took office in 1868. During his two decades in power, he overhauled the curriculum, oversaw an expansion of inquiry into the sciences, and supervised the addition of a number of buildings in the High Victorian Gothic style to the campus.[Princeton Companion] McCosh Hall is named in his honor.

Princeton

In 1896, the college officially changed its name from the College of New Jersey to Princeton University to honor the town in which it resided. During this year, the College also underwent large expansion and officially became a university. Under Woodrow Wilson, Princeton introduced the preceptorial system (1905), a then-unique concept that replaced the standard lecture method of teaching with a more personal form where small groups of students, or precepts, could interact with a single instructor, or preceptor, in their field of interest.

In 1969, Princeton University first admitted women as undergraduates. In 1887, the university had actually maintained and staffed a sister college in the town of Princeton on Evelyn and Nassau streets, called the Evelyn College for Women, which was closed after roughly a decade of operation. After abortive discussions in 1967 with Sarah Lawrence College to relocate the women's college to Princeton and merge it with the university, 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 barely finished these plans by April 1969 when the admission's 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 freshwomen and transfer students of other years, entered Princeton on September 6 1969 amidst much media attention.

Princeton University has been home to scholars, scientists, writers, and statesmen, including four United States presidents, two of whom graduated from the University. James Madison and Woodrow Wilson graduated from Princeton, Grover Cleveland was not an alumnus but served as a trustee of the University for some time while spending his retirement in the town of Princeton, and John F. Kennedy spent his freshman fall at the University before leaving due to illness and transferring to Harvard. The entertainer and civil rights figure Paul Robeson grew up in the Borough of Princeton, and artisans from Italy, Scotland, and Ireland have contributed to the town's architectural history. This legacy, spanning the entire history of American architecture, is preserved through buildings by such architects as Benjamin Latrobe, Ralph Adams Cram, McKim, Mead & White, Robert Venturi, and Nick Yeager.

About Princeton

Princeton offers two main undergraduate degrees: the bachelor of arts (A.B.) and the bachelor of science in engineering (B.S.E.). Courses in the humanities are traditionally either seminars or semi-weekly lectures with an additional discussion seminar, called a "precept" (short for "preceptorial"). To graduate, all A.B. candidates must complete a senior thesis and one or two extensive pieces of independent research, known as "junior papers" or "JPs". They must also fulfill a two semester foreign language requirement and distribution requirements. B.S.E. candidates follow a parallel track with an emphasis on a rigorous science and math curriculum, a two semester foreign language requirement, and at least two semesters of independent research including an optional senior thesis. A.B. candidates typically have more freedom in course selection than B.S.E. candidates, though both enjoy a comparatively high degree of latitude in creating a self-structured curriculum.

Princeton offers postgraduate research degrees (most notably the Ph.D.), and ranks among the best in many fields, including mathematics, physics, astronomy and plasma physics, economics, history and philosophy. However, it does not have the extensive range of professional postgraduate schools of many other universities—for instance, Princeton has no medical school, law school, or business school.a short-lived Princeton Law School folded in 1852 Its most famous professional school is the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (known as "Woody Woo" to students), founded in 1930 as the School of Public and International Affairs and renamed in 1948. The university also offers professional graduate degrees in engineering, architecture and finance.

The university's libraries have over 11 million holdings; the main university library, Firestone Library, housing almost four million volumes, is one of the largest university libraries in the world (and among the largest "open stack" libraries in existence). Its collections include priceless manuscripts such as MS. 71, s.x/xi, generically known as the Blickling homilies. In addition to Firestone, many individual disciplines have their own libraries, including architecture, art history, East Asian studies, engineering, geology, international affairs and public policy, and Near Eastern studies. Seniors in some departments can register for enclosed carrels in the main library for workspace and the private storage of books and research materials.

The university is also home to the third-largest university chapel in the world, the Princeton University Chapel. Known for its gothic architecture, the chapel houses one of the largest and most precious stained glass collections in the country. Both the Opening Exercises for entering freshmen and the Baccalaureate Service for graduating seniors take place in the University Chapel.

Walker, Class of 1903, and Cuyler Halls are Princeton dormitories in the Collegiate Gothic style.
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Walker, Class of 1903, and Cuyler Halls are Princeton dormitories in the Collegiate Gothic style.

Fine Hall, the home of the Department of Mathematics. It is the tallest building on campus, although its height above sea-level is not higher than the University Chapel, significantly uphill from Fine.
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Fine Hall, the home of the Department of Mathematics. It is the tallest building on campus, although its height above sea-level is not higher than the University Chapel, significantly uphill from Fine.

Clio Hall.
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Clio Hall.

The campus, located on 2 km² of landscaped grounds, features a large number of Neo-gothic-style buildings, most dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is situated about one hour from New York City and Philadelphia. Stanhope Hall (once a library, now administrative offices) and East and West College, both dormitories, followed. While many of the succeeding buildings -- particularly the dormitories of the Northern campus—were built in a Collegiate Gothic style, the university is something of a mixture of American architectural movements. Greek Revival temples (Whig and Clio Halls) abut the lawn south of Nassau Hall, while a crenellated theater (Murray-Dodge) guards the route west to the library. Modern buildings are confined to the west and south of the campus, a quarter overlooked by the 14-story Fine Hall. Fine, the Math Department's home, designed by Warner, Burns, Toan and Lunde and completed in 1970, is the tallest building at the University.[Emporis: Fine Hall] Contemporary additions feature a number of big-name architects, including IM Pei's Spelman Halls, Robert Venturi's Frist Campus Center, Rafael Vinoly's Carl Icahn Laboratory, and the Hillier Group's Bowen Hall. A residential college by Demetri Porphyrios and a science library by Frank Gehry are under construction. Much sculpture adorns the campus, including pieces by Henry Moore (Oval with Points, also nicknamed "Nixon's Nose"), Clement Meadmore (Upstart II), and Alexander Calder (Five Disks: One Empty). At the base of campus is the Delaware and Raritan Canal, dating from 1830, and Lake Carnegie, a man-made lake donated by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, used for rowing.

Princeton is among the wealthiest universities in the world, with an endowment just over 11 billion US dollars (#4th largest in the United States) sustained through the continued donations of its alumni and maintained by investment advisors. Some of Princeton's wealth is invested in its art museum, which features works by Claude Monet and Andy Warhol, among other prominent artists.

Princeton consistently ranks among the best universities in the world, and has frequently been ranked number one (#1) by U.S. News and World Report.

Princeton hosts two Model United Nations conferences, PMUNC in the fall for high school students and PICSIM in the spring for college students.

Princeton University also recently purchased a supercomputer, Orangena, from IBM, as of 11/2005 the 79th fastest in the world (LINPACK performance of 4713; compare up to 12250 for other U. S. universities and 280600 for the top-ranked supercomputer, belonging to the U. S. Department of Energy).

Financial aid

Princeton University was named by the Princeton Review (which is, despite the name, unaffiliated with the university) as one of the most affordable colleges in the nation. In 2001, Princeton was the first university to eliminate loans for all students who qualify for aid, expanding a program instituted three years earlier in which loans were replaced with grants for low and middle-income students. The move followed a series of enhancements to Princeton's aid program beginning in 1998, which included: admitting international students on a "need-blind" basis along with U.S. students; removing the value of the family home from the formula that calculates how much parents are expected to contribute to college; reducing the contribution rate on student savings; and decreasing summer savings expectations for lower- and middle-income students.

Princeton has no plans to match financial aid initiatives by its peers, Yale and Harvard, which eliminate family contributions altogether for low income students. According to Princeton Director of Financial Aid Don Betterton, "We're satisfied with our program the way it is."[Yale Daily News: "Yale reforms financial aid policy"]

Princeton is also named by both US News and Princeton Review to have the fewest number of students graduating with debt. The Office of Financial Aid estimates that Princeton seniors on aid will graduate with average indebtedness of $2,360. That compares to the national average of about $20,000 for graduating seniors who have borrowed, according to the office. Statistics show that for the Class of 2009, close to 60% of the incoming students are on some type of financial aid.

Undergraduate program

Undergraduates at Princeton University agree to conform to an academic honesty policy called the Honor Code. Students write and sign the honor pledge, "I pledge my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this examination," on every in-class exam they take at Princeton. The Code carries a second obligation: upon matriculation, every student pledges to report any suspected cheating to the student-run Honor Committee. As a result of this code, students take all tests unsupervised by faculty members. Violations of the Honor Code incur the strongest of disciplinary actions, including suspension and often expulsion. Out-of-class exercises are outside the Honor Committee's jurisdiction, but students are often expected to sign a pledge on their papers that they have not plagiarized their work ("This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations.").

More than 95 percent of students live on campus in dormitories. Freshmen and sophomores live in residential colleges. Later-year students have the option to live off-campus, but very few do, because rents in the Princeton area are extremely high. Undergraduate social life revolves around a number of coeducational "eating clubs," which are open to upperclassmen and serve a similar role to that which fraternities and sororities do at some other campuses.

Admission is extremely competitive, and according to The Atlantic Monthly, it is the second most selective college in the United States, after MIT. Princeton has a "need-blind" admission policy, in which students are accepted into the incoming class on merit, regardless of their ability to pay the high tuition fees. Despite these policies, Princeton's student body is often regarded as more culturally conservative or traditional than the student bodies of peer institutions. The administration has aggressively pursued a diversification policy: it is a member of the Davis United World College Fund, and students from these international schools can expect to have their full needs, as assessed by Princeton, met by the fund.

Princeton is also home to one of the world's top-ranked debating societies, the American Whig-Cliosophic Society, which is a member of the American Parliamentary Debating Association and has twice hosted the World Universities Debating Championships.

Residential colleges

The undergraduate residential colleges are the residential-dining complexes that house freshmen, sophomores, and a handful of junior and senior resident advisers. Each college consists of a set of dormitories, a dining hall (e.g., Ricardo A. Mestres Hall), a variety of other amenities (study spaces, libraries, performance spaces, darkrooms, and the like), and a collection of administrators and associated faculty.

At present, Princeton has five undergraduate residential colleges. Rockefeller College and Mathey College are located in the northwest corner of the campus; their Collegiate Gothic architecture often graces University brochures. Wilson College and Butler College, located south of the center of the campus, are more recent additions, built specifically to become residential colleges. Forbes College, located slightly southwest of the southwest corner of the campus, is a former hotel, purchased by the university and expanded to form a residential college. Butler, and most of Forbes, are in a different municipality, Princeton Township, from the rest of the main campus, which is in Princeton Borough. Princeton broke ground for a sixth college, named Whitman College after its principal sponsor, eBay CEO Meg Whitman ' 77, in late 2003. The new dormitories will be constructed in the neo-Gothic architectural style and have been designed by renowned architect Demetri Porphyrios.

A variant on the present college system was originally proposed by University President Woodrow Wilson in the early twentieth century. Wilson's model was much closer to Yale's present system, which features four-year colleges. Lacking the support of the Trustees, the plan languished until 1968, when Wilson College was established, capping a series of alternatives to the eating clubs. A series of often fierce debates raged before the present underclass-college system emerged. A further addition to the system is slated for the completion date of Whitman College. At the same time that 500 new students will be added to the Princeton undergraduate student body under the Wythes Plan, two of the six residential colleges will be expanded to accommodate upperclassmen—representing the realization of Wilson's plan a century after he proposed it.

Sunrise by the Cleveland Tower in the Old Graduate College.
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Sunrise by the Cleveland Tower in the Old Graduate College.

Princeton has one graduate residential college, known simply as the Graduate College, located beyond Forbes College at the outskirts of campus. The far-flung location of the G.C. was the spoil of a squabble between Woodrow Wilson and then-Graduate School Dean Andrew Fleming West, which the latter won.[Andrew Fleming West] (Wilson preferred a central location for the College; West wanted the graduate students as far as possible from the noisy, dissolute undergraduates.) The G.C. is composed of a large Collegiate Gothic section, crowned by Cleveland Tower, a local landmark that also houses a world-class carillon. The attached New Graduate College houses more students. Its design departs from collegiate gothic, and is reminiscent of Butler College, the newest of the five pre-Whitman undergraduate colleges.

Cleveland Tower at the Old Graduate College in the noontime autumn sun.
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Cleveland Tower at the Old Graduate College in the noontime autumn sun.

Each residential college hosts social events and activities, guest speakers (such as Edward Norton, who showed a special sneak-preview of Fight Club on campus), and trips. Residential Colleges are best known for their performing art trips to New York City. Students sign up to take trips to see the ballet, the opera, and Broadway shows.

Athletics

The Princeton Review declared the university the 10th strongest "jock school" in the nation. It has also consistently been ranked at the top of the Time Magazine's Strongest College Sports Teams lists. Most recently, Princeton was ranked as a top 10 school for athletics by Sports Illustrated. Princeton is best known for its men and women's crew teams, winning several NCAA and Eastern titles in recent years.

Princeton has dominated the Ivy league, winning a record 21 conference titles from 2000-2001. At the culmination of 2004, Princeton had garnered a total of 36 Ivy League conference titles from 2001-2004 sports seasons. Most recently in 2005, the Tigers' women's soccer team made the NCAA Final Four, the first Ivy League team to do so. The Tigers have taken every field hockey conference title since 1994.

Princeton's basketball team is perhaps the best known team within the Ivy League, nicknamed the "perennial giant killer". From 1992-2001, a nine year span, Princeton's men's basketball team had entered the NCAA tournament 6 times—from a conference that has never had an at-large entry in the NCAA tournament. For the last half-century, Princeton and Penn have traditionally battled for men's basketball dominance in the Ivy League; Princeton had its first losing season in 50 years of Ivy League basketball in 2005. Princeton tied the record for fewest points in a Division I game since the 3-point line started in 1986-87 when they scored 21 points in a loss against Monmouth University on December 14, 2005.

Princeton's historical place in American Sports is sealed in the first Intercollegiate Football game, which they played on the Rutgers campus on November 6, 1869. Its rivalry with Yale, active since 1873, is the second-oldest in American football. In more recent years, Princeton has excelled in both men's and women's lacrosse, and both men's and women's crew.

Significant places

Nassau Hall

Nassau Hall
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Nassau Hall

Nassau Hall is the main administrative building of the University. For more information on this historic building, please see the main article, Nassau Hall.

Cannon Green

Cannon Green is located on the south end of the main lawn. Buried in the ground at the center is the "Big Cannon", the top of which protrudes from the earth and is traditionally spray-painted in orange with the current senior class year. A second "Little Cannon" is buried in the lawn in front of nearby Whig Hall. Both were buried in response to periodic thefts by Rutgers students. The "Big Cannon" is said to have been left in Princeton by Hessians after the Revolutionary War but moved to New Brunswick during the War of 1812. Ownership of the cannon was disputed and the cannon was eventually taken back to Princeton partly by a military company and then by 100 Princeton students. The "Big Cannon" was eventually buried in its current location in front of Nassau Hall in 1840. In 1875, Rutgers students attempting to recover the original cannon stole the "Little Cannon" instead. The smaller cannon was subsequently recovered and buried as well. The protruding cannons are occasionally painted scarlet by Rutgers students who continue the traditional dispute.Orange Key Virtual Tour - [Princeton-Rutgers Cannon War]

The Academy Award winning movie, A Beautiful Mind, contains a scene on Cannon Green. John Nash plays Go with his college rival while sitting on stone benches in the middle of the green. (The benches do not exist; like many elements of the Princeton setting, they were introduced for the film.)

McCarter Theater

McCarter Theater
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McCarter Theater

McCarter Theater is recognized as one of this country's leading regional theaters. Under the Artistic Direction of Emily Mann, the Tony Award-winning McCarter Theater has demonstrated a commitment to the highest professional standards. McCarter's vision is to create a theater of testimony, engaged in a dialogue with the world around it, paying tribute to the enduring power of the human spirit and scope of the imagination.

A hallmark of the Theater Series is the creation of new work. Since 1991, over 20 new plays and adaptations have had their World or American premieres at McCarter including: Emily Mann's Having Our Say, Athol Fugard's Valley Song, John Henry Redwood's The Old Settler, and Stephen Wadworth's adaptations of Marivaux. McCarter premieres have been produced in cities across the country. In the past, the shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and Joseph Kesserling's Arsenic and Old Lace made their world premieres at McCarter.

McCarter Theater is also the unofficial home of the famous Princeton Triangle Club, a comedy theater troupe whose alumni include Brooke Shields and Academy Award-winning actor Jimmy Stewart.

Princeton University Art Museum

Princeton University Art Museum was established to give students direct, intimate, and sustained access to original works of art to complement and enrich instruction and research at the University, and this continues to be its primary function.

Numbering nearly 60,000 objects, the collections range chronologically from ancient to contemporary art, and concentrate geographically on the Mediterranean regions, Western Europe, China, the United States, and Latin America. There is a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, including ceramics, marbles, bronzes, and Roman mosaics from Princeton University’s excavations in Antioch. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture, metalwork, and stained glass. The collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the early Renaissance through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art.

Among the strengths in the museum are the collections of Chinese art, with important holdings in bronzes, tomb figurines, painting, and calligraphy; and pre-Columbian art, with examples of the art of the Maya. The museum has collections of old master prints and drawings and a comprehensive collection of original photographs. African art is represented as well as Northwest Coast Indian art. Other works include those of the John B. Putnam, Jr., Memorial Collection of twentieth-century sculpture, including works by such modern masters as Alexander Calder, Jacques Lipshitz, Henry Moore, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso.

Undergraduate admissions

In 2006, Princeton's overall acceptance rate was 10.2%, accepting 1792 students from a pool of 17,563 applicants. 599 of these were accepted Early Decision out of a total 2236 ED applicants, for a 26.8% Early Decision acceptance rate. Regular Decision was much harsher, with acceptances going to only 1193 out of 15327 applicants (this includes deferred ED students as well), for a 7.8% admittance rate.

After initiatives by its peer institutions, Harvard, Yale and Stanford, Princeton has undergone much criticism in recent years#redirect [[Template:Fact]] for still holding onto its binding early admission program. While at Princeton those admitted under the program are bound to attend the school, those admitted under such an early program at its peer institutions are allowed to attend anywhere.

Traditions

Old Nassau

This phrase can refer to:

Princeton neologisms

The Daily Princetonian hosts a detailed (if slightly dated) list of Princeton jargon; see [A Princeton Dictionary].

Lists of Princeton people

In fiction

See also

References

External links

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