Princeton University

Princeton University
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Princeton University Coat of Arms

Motto Dei sub numine viget
(Under God's power she flourishes)
Established 1746
School type Private
President Shirley M. Tilghman
Location Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Campus Suburban, 600 acres (2.4 km²)
(Princeton Borough and Township)
Enrollment 4,635 undergraduate,
1,975 graduate
Faculty 1,103
Mascot Tiger Missing image
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Endowment $9.9 billion
Homepage www.princeton.edu

Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey, is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. One of the nation's foremost universities, Princeton has in addition to its noted undergraduate college and graduate school important schools of architecture, engineering, and public and international affairs. Research is carried on in many areas, including plasma physics and jet propulsion. The university is affiliated with the Brookhaven National Laboratories. The Harvey S. Firestone Library (opened 1948) and the art museum house many outstanding collections. 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 its original name. The name was officially changed to "Princeton University" in 1896. While originally a Presbyterian institution, the university is now non-sectarian and makes no religious demands on its students. Princeton is one of the eight schools in the Ivy League and consistently ranks at the top of college and university rankings.

Shirley Tilghman is the current president of Princeton University.

Contents
1 History of the University
2 About Princeton

2.1 Financial Aid

3 Undergraduate program
4 Residential Colleges
5 Athletics
6 Significant places

6.1 Nassau Hall
6.2 Cannon Green
6.3 McCarter Theater
6.4 Princeton University Art Museum

7 Notable Princeton alumni
8 Notable Princeton professors
9 Traditions
10 Old Nassau
11 Lingo
12 In fiction
13 See also
14 External links

History of the University

Established by the “New Light” (evangelical) Presbyterians, Princeton was originally intended to train ministers, but this purpose disappeared as higher education gained hold. The college opened at Elizabeth, New Jersey, under the presidency of Jonathan Dickinson as the College of New Jersey. Its second president was Aaron Burr. In 1756 the college moved to Princeton, New Jersey.

From the move to Princeton in 1756 to the construction of Stanhope Hall in 1803, the University's sole building was Nassau Hall, named for William III of England. 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, burnings that left only its walls standing 1802 and 1855, and innumerable minor insults. Rebuilt by Joseph Henry Latrobe, John Notman, and John Witherspoon, the modern 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 exchanging the dormitories for more classrooms, to its present role as the administrative center of the university. (APC)

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Nassau Hall, the University's oldest building. Note the tiger sculptures beside the steps.

The university was on its way to 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 to the campus. (APC) The oft-photographed McCosh Hall is named in his honor.

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, Princeton University also underwent large expansion and Princeton officially became a university. Under Woodrow Wilson, Princeton introduced the preceptorial system (1905), a change that led to a greater degree of individualized instruction.

In 1930, the Institute for Advanced Study was founded in Princeton and became the first residential institute for scholars in the country, with Albert Einstein appointed as one of its first professors. The 20th century has seen an influx of scholars, research personnel, and corporations from all parts of the world.

In 1969, Princeton University first admitted women as undergraduates. In 1887, the university actually maintained and staffed a sister coIlege in the town on Evelyn and Nassau streets, called the Evelyn College for Women, which was closed down after roughly a decade of operation. The administration raced to formulate the concrete steps 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 had to start 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 a frenzy of media ogling and ribbing.

Today Princeton University is still a center for learning and culture and Princeton has been home to world-renowned scholars, scientists, writers, and statesman, including three United States presidents, Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland, and John F. Kennedy, who spent his freshman fall at the University before leaving due to illness and later enrolling at Harvard. Shaped by residents of all backgrounds, Princeton has been a dynamic community, growing and changing with the times yet retaining an essential small-town quality. Paul Robeson grew up in Princeton and artisans from Italy, Scotland, and Ireland have contributed to the town's rich architectural history. This architectural legacy, spanning the entire history of American architecture, is well-preserved through buildings by nationally renowned architects such as Benjamin Latrobe, Ralph Adams Cram, McKim, Mead & White, Robert Venturi, and Michael Graves.

About Princeton

Reputed to be the most undergraduate-friendly Ivy League school, 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"). This system was instituted by Woodrow Wilson, when he served as university president. 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. B.S.E. candidates follow a different track that includes a rigorous science and math curriculum and at least two semesters of independent research.

Princeton offers postgraduate research degrees (most notably the Ph.D.), and ranks among the best in many fields, including mathematics, physics, economics, history, and philosophy. However, it does not have the extensive range of professional postgraduate schools of many other universities --- for instance, it has no medical 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, founded in 1930 as the School of Public and International Affairs and renamed in 1948. The university also offers professional graduate degrees in engineering and architecture.

The university's libraries have 11 million holdings, and the main university library, Firestone Library, houses over six million volumes and ranks as one of the largest university libraries in the nation and world. In addition to Firestone Library, 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 library for private use and the storage of books and research materials.

The campus, located on 2 km² of lavishly landscaped grounds, features a large number of Neo-gothic-style buildings, most dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is situated at an ideal location, 45 minutes from two metropolitan meccas of the world, New York City and Philadelphia. The main university administration building, Nassau Hall, was built in 1756 and briefly served as the United States Capitol in 1783. Contemporary additions to the campus feature some more modern architecture, including buildings by Robert Venturi and the Hillier Group, and new buildings by Demetri Porphyrios and Frank Gehry. Much sculpture adorns the campus, including pieces by Henry Moore (Oval with Points, also nicknamed "Nixon's Nose"), Clement Meadmoore (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, used for rowing.

Princeton is among the wealthiest universities in the world, with an endowment of almost ten billion US dollars (Daily Princetonian, 8 Feb 2005) sustained through the continued donations of its alumni and maintained by expert investment advisors. Some of Princeton's wealth is invested in its impressive art museum, which features works by Monet and Andy Warhol, among other prominent artists. Princeton is the wealthiest Ivy League school on a per-student basis.

Among U.S. universities, Princeton has been ranked first or tied for first in U.S. News's college rankings in 2005, 2004, 2002, 2001, and 2000.

Financial Aid

Princeton University was named by the Princeton Review as one of the most affordable colleges in the nation. In 2001, Princeton eliminated loans for all students who qualify for aid, expanding a program instituted three years earlier in which loans were replaced with grants for low-income students. The unprecedented 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 is also named by both US News and Princeton Review to have the least number of students graduate with debt. Since students still may wind up taking out some loans to pay for computer purchases, eating club dues or other living expenses, 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 incoming 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 on 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 action, 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.").

Most of the student body lives 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, as rents in the Princeton area are extremely high. (Many who live off-campus were residents of the town to begin with.) 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 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. Unlike other universities which ask students to take on the heavy burden of student loans, Princeton simply pays the remainder of costs the student's family cannot afford through grants from its endowment. Princeton was the first university to implement such a "no-loan" financial aid policy in 2001. Despite these policies, Princeton's student body is often regarded as more culturally conservative or traditional than the student bodies of peer institutions. However, most students have voted Democratic in presidential elections. To change this general perception, Princeton 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.

In 1869 Princeton competed with Rutgers in the first ever intercollegiate football game, losing 6 to 4. Its rivalry with Yale, active since 1873, is the second oldest in American football. In more recent years, Princeton has excelled in men's basketball, both men's and women's lacrosse, and both men's and women's crew.

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 previously 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, a variety of other amenities (study spaces, libraries, performance spaces, darkrooms, and the like), and a collection of administrators and associated faculty.

Princeton presently 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. Princeton broke ground for a sixth college, named Whitman College after its principal sponsor, eBay CEO Meg Whitman, in late 2003. The new dormitories will be constructed in the neo-Gothic architectural style and has 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.

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. (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.

However, these residential colleges are much more than just residential-dining facilities. Each residential college promotes and creates a bond between students within the same residential college by hosting 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 are eager to sign up to take trips to see the ballet (e.g. The Nutcracker), the opera (e.g. Cavalleria Rustica, Madama Butterfly, and La Boheme), and Broadway (e.g. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Wicked (musical), Avenue Q, Spamalot, and The Lion King.)

Athletics

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The conference logo

Princeton is frequently among the best athletics programs in the Ivy League. 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 lacrosse teams, winning several NCAA titles in the past number of years. And though other varsity teams may not have won the NCAA title, five teams in 1996-1997 came home as national runner-ups.

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 completely dominated field hockey, taking every 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. The basketball team has also dominated the Ivy League, with its first losing season (2005) in 50 years of Ivy League Basketball.

Significant places

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 a cannon, the top of which protrudes from the earth and is traditionally spray-painted in orange with the current senior class year. A second cannon is buried in the lawn in front of nearby Whig Hall. Both were buried in response to periodic thefts by nearby colleges.

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 Theatre is recognized as one of this country's leading regional theaters. Under the Artistic Direction of Emily Mann, the Tony Award-winning McCarter Theatre 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 made a significant contribution to the American theater and have been produced in cities across the country. In the past, the famous shows of Rodgers and Hammersteins's South Pacific and Wilder's Our Town made their world premieres at McCarter.

As a world-class performing arts presenter, McCarter offers audiences diverse programs of music, dance, and special events featuring artists of national and international repute from a wide variety of disciplines and styles. Under the leadership of W. W. Lockwood, Jr. for 40 years, McCarter's programs rival any performing arts series in the country.

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

Princeton University Art Museum

The Princeton University Art Museum is one of the most outstanding university museums in the country. The collections have greatly exceeded those of a study collection. The founding principal of the museum was to give students direct, intimate, and sustained access to original works of art to complement and enrich the instruction and research at the University, and this continues to be its primary function. The museum also serves a much larger audience, however, as one of the richest cultural resources in the state of New Jersey and as an active participant in the international community of museums.

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 an outstanding 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 important examples from the early Renaissance through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art.

Among the greatest 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 remarkable examples of the art of the Maya. The museum has distinguished 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 outstanding 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.

Notable Princeton alumni

See List of Princeton University people.

Notable Princeton professors

Professors who are also Princeton alumni are listed in italics:

Traditions

Old Nassau

This phrase can refer to:

Lingo

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

In fiction

In the movie Batman Begins, it is revealed that Bruce Wayne attended Princeton University.

The movie A Beautiful Mind from 2001 takes place at Princeton University, and contains great location shots. (This movie was a semi-fictionalized biography of Princeton Professor John Nash, rather than pure fiction.)

The movie I.Q., starring Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins with Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein. A scene where Tom Robbins' character gives a lecture is in what is now known as Room 302 of the Frist Campus Center.

The books The Rule of Four, This Side Of Paradise, The Princeton Murders, and Death of a Princeton President are set on Princeton's campus.

In Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Princeton is supposedly one of their destinations. However, the film was not shot on campus.

In The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, the first 10 minutes show a Princeton graduation.

In A Cinderella Story, the characters played by Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray will be attending Princeton at the end of the movie.

The opening shots of Scent of a Woman were of the Junior Slums (see above in Lingo). However, in the movie, the location was not called Princeton but rather a private boarding school somewhere in New England.

The American TV show House M.D. uses aerial shots of the campus to depict the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

In the film Risky Business, Tom Cruise as Joel Goodson proves himself to be Princeton material by becoming a pimp and seeing to his interviewer's sexual gratification.

See also

External links


Ivy League:
Brown University | Columbia University | Cornell University | Dartmouth College | Harvard University | University of Pennsylvania | Princeton University | Yale University 		Missing image
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Ivy League

See also: Princeton University, 1746, 1756