Princeton University

Located in Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University is one of the eight Ivy League universities. It was founded as the "College of New Jersey" in 1746, and was originally located in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The school moved to Princeton in 1756, still under the original name; the name was officially changed to "Princeton University" in 1896.

Princeton is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in the world. It is amongst the wealthiest, with an endowment of several billion US dollars through the continued donations of its wealthy alumni. Some idea of Princeton's wealth may be gained through its impressive art museum, which features works by Monet and Andy Warhol, amongst other prominent artists.

Princeton offers four-year undergraduate degrees, as well as postgraduate research degrees, but does not have the extensive range of professional postgraduate schools of many other universities - for example, there is no law or business school. Its one major professional school is the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

The campus, located on hectares of lavishly landscaped grounds, features a large number of gothic-style buildings, many dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. Contemporary additions to the campus feature some more modern architecture, and much sculpture adorns the campus.

Most of the student body lives on campus at the various "colleges" (which are basically student dorms). Undergraduate social life revolves around a number of "eating clubs" which serve a similar role to fraternities and sororieties do at other campuses. Later-year students have the option to live off-campus: few do, as rents in the area are extremely high.

Princeton has a "needs-blind" admission policy, in which students are accepted into Princeton on merit, regardless of their ability to pay the (very steep) fees. Instead of student loans, Princeton simply pays the remainder of costs out of its endowment. Despite these policies, Princeton's student body contains a large proportion of the sons and daughters of the wealthy, and as a group is generally regarded as politically conservative in a "North-Eastern Republican" sense.

Princeton's mascot is the tiger, and its school colors are orange and black.

Famous Princeton faculty members or alumni:

• Hobie Baker- famous hockey player
• James Baker - Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush
• Ben Bernanke[?] - Bush nominee for Fed
• Jeff Bezos - founder of Amazon.com
• Alan Blinder[?] - Fed under Clinton
• Aaron Burr - Vice President of the United States
• Dean Cain[?] - actor, played Superman in the television series Lois and Clark[?].
• Frank Carlucci - Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan
• William Colby[?] - director of the CIA
• David Duchovny - actor best known for his role in The X-Files
• John Foster Dulles
• Albert Einstein - physicist, worked at the Institute for Advanced Study
• José Ferrer
• F. Scott Fitzgerald- writer
• Malcolm Forbes[?] - businessman and publisher
• Steve Forbes[?] - son of Malcolm, businessman and publisher of Forbes magazine[?]
• Robert George[?] -
• Charlie Gibson[?] - TV morning show host
• Carl Icahn
• U.S. President John F. Kennedy - flunked out after first year
• Brian Kernighan - co-inventor of the awk programming language, and co-author of the definitive textbook The C Programming Language.
• Saul Kripke - Philosopher
• Paul Krugman[?]
• Jim Leach[?] - US Congressman
• Henry Lighthorse Lee[?] - father of Robert E. Lee
• James Madison - President of the United States.
• Burton Malkiel[?] - author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street
• Thomas Mann
• Toni Morrison - Nobel prize-winning novelist
• John Nash - schizophrenic mathematician who was the subject of A Beautiful Mind.
• Joyce Carol Oates[?]
• Eugene O'Neill
• Richard Perle - right-wing policy expert
• David Remnick[?] - New Yorker Mag
• Neil Rudenstein[?] - former president of Harvard
• Donald Rumsfeld
• George Rupp[?] - until recently, president of Columbia
• Paul Sarbanes[?] - US Senator
• George Shultz[?] - Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan
• Charles Schwab[?]
• Harold Shapiro[?] - until recently, president of Princeton
• Brooke Shields - actress.
• Ruth Simmons[?] - first female and first black president of any Ivy League school - Brown
• Peter Singer - philosopher
• Jimmy Stewart - actor
• Robert Tarjan - computer scientist, inventor of many algorithms related to graph theory.
• Booth Tarkington
• Shirley Tilghman - current president of Princeton
• Alan Turing - computer scientist, only spent a year here.
• Cornel West[?]
• Meg Whitman[?] - CEO of eBay
• Thornton Wilder - Our Town premiered at Princeton
• Sean Wilentz[?]
• Andrew Wiles - the mathematician who proved Fermat's Last Theorem.
• Edmund Wilson[?] - literary critic
• Woodrow Wilson - President of the United States, and formerly of Princeton University

External link

• Princeton's home page (http://www.princeton.edu/)