Принстон Их сургууль

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark in 1747 and then to its Mercer County campus in Princeton nine years later. It officially became a university in 1896 and was subsequently renamed Princeton University.

The university is governed by the Trustees of Princeton University and has an endowment of $37.7 billion, the largest endowment per student in the United States. Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering to approximately 9,000 students on its main campus spanning 600 acres (2.4 km2) within the borough of Princeton. It offers postgraduate degrees through the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Architecture and the Bendheim Center for Finance. The university also manages the Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and is home to the NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and has one of the largest university libraries in the world.

Princeton uses a residential college system and is known for its eating clubs for juniors and seniors. The university has over 500 student organizations. Princeton students embrace a wide variety of traditions from both the past and present. The university is an NCAA Division I school and competes in the Ivy League. The school's athletic team, the Princeton Tigers, has won the most titles in its conference and has sent many students and alumni to the Olympics.

As of October 2025, 81 Nobel laureates, 16 Fields Medalists and 17 Turing Award laureates have been affiliated with Princeton University as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. In addition, Princeton has been associated with 21 National Medal of Science awardees, five Abel Prize awardees, a Dan David Prize awardee, 11 National Humanities Medal recipients, 217 Rhodes Scholars, 137 Marshall Scholars, and

62 Gates Cambridge Scholars. Two U.S. presidents, twelve U.S. Supreme Court justices (three of whom serve on the court as of 2026) and numerous living industry and media tycoons and foreign heads of state are all counted among Princeton's alumni body. Princeton has graduated many members of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Cabinet, including eight secretaries of state, three secretaries of defense and two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Princeton alumni also include 113 athletes who competed in the Olympics, winning 19 gold medals, 24 silver medals, and 23 bronze medals.

History

Founding

Princeton University, founded as the College of New Jersey, was shaped much in its formative years by the "Log College", a seminary founded by the Reverend William Tennent at Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, in about 1726. While no legal connection ever existed, many of the pupils and adherents from the Log College would go on to financially support and become substantially involved in the early years of the university. While early writers considered it as the predecessor of the university, the idea has been rebuked by Princeton historians.

The founding of the university itself originated from a split in the Presbyterian church following the Great Awakening. In 1741, New Light Presbyterians were expelled from the Synod of Philadelphia in defense of how the Log College ordained ministers. The four founders of the College of New Jersey, who were New Lights, were either expelled or withdrew from the Synod and devised a plan to establish a new college, for they were disappointed with Harvard and Yale's opposition to the Great Awakening and dissatisfied with the limited instruction at the Log College. They convinced three other Presbyterians to join them and decided on New Jersey as the location for the college, as at the time, there was no institution between Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, and the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia; it was also where some of the founders preached. Although their initial request was rejected by the Anglican governor Lewis Morrison, the acting governor after Morrison's death, John Hamilton, granted a charter for the College of New Jersey on October 22, 1746. In 1747, approximately five months after acquiring the charter, the trustees elected Jonathan Dickinson as president and opened in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where classes were held in Dickinson's parsonage. With its founding, it became the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The founders aimed for the college to have an expansive curriculum to teach people of various professions, not solely ministerial work. Though the school was open to those of any religious denomination, with many of the founders being of Presbyterian faith, the college became the educational and religious capital of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian America.

Colonial and early years

In 1747, following the death of then President Jonathan Dickinson, the college moved from Elizabeth to Newark, New Jersey, as that was where presidential successor Aaron Burr Sr.'s parsonage was located. That same year, Princeton's first charter came under dispute by Anglicans, but on September 14, 1748, the recently appointed governor Jonathan Belcher granted a second charter. Belcher, a Congregationalist, had become alienated from his alma mater, Harvard, and decided to "adopt" the infant college. Belcher would go on to raise funds for the college and donate his 474-volume library, making it one of the largest libraries in the colonies.

Campus

The main campus consists of more than 200 buildings on 600 acres (2.4 km2) in Princeton, New Jersey. The James Forrestal Campus, a smaller location designed mainly as a research and instruction complex, is split between nearby Plainsboro and South Brunswick. The campuses are situated about one hour from both New York City and Philadelphia on the train. The university also owns more than 520 acres (2.1 km2) of property in West Windsor Township, and is where Princeton is planning to construct a graduate student housing complex, which will be known as "Lake Campus North".

The first building on campus was Nassau Hall, completed in 1756, and situated on the northern edge of the campus facing Nassau Street. The campus expanded steadily around Nassau Hall during the early and middle 19th century. The McCosh presidency (1868–88) saw the construction of a number of buildings in the High Victorian Gothic and Romanesque Revival styles, although many of them are now gone, leaving the remaining few to appear out of place. At the end of the 19th century, much of Princeton's architecture was designed by the Cope and Stewardson firm (led by the same University of Pennsylvania professors of architecture who designed a large part of Washington University in St. Louis and University of Pennsylvania) resulting in the Collegiate Gothic style for which Princeton is known for today. Implemented initially by William Appleton Potter, and later enforced by the university's supervising architect, Ralph Adams Cram, the Collegiate Gothic style remained the standard for all new building on the Princeton campus until 1960. A flurry of construction projects in the 1960s produced a number of new buildings on the south side of the main campus, many of which have been poorly received. Several prominent architects have contributed some more recent additions, including Frank Gehry (Lewis Library), I. M. Pei (Spelman Halls), Demetri Porphyrios (Whitman College, a Collegiate Gothic project), Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (Frist Campus Center, among several others), Minoru Yamasaki (Robertson Hall), and Rafael Viñoly (Carl Icahn Laboratory).

A group of 20th-century sculptures scattered throughout the campus forms the Putnam Collection of Sculpture. It includes works by Alexander Calder (Five Disks: One Empty), Jacob Epstein (Albert Einstein), Henry Moore (Oval with Points), Isamu Noguchi (White Sun), and Pablo Picasso (Head of a Woman). Richard Serra's The Hedgehog and The Fox is located between Peyton and Fine halls next to Princeton Stadium and the Lewis Library.

Organization and administration

Governance and structure

Princeton's 20th and current president is Christopher Eisgruber, who was appointed by the university's board of trustees in 2013. The board is responsible for the overall direction of the university. It consists of no fewer than 23 and no more than 40 members at any one time, with the president of the university and the governor of New Jersey serving as ex officio members. It approves the operating and capital budgets, supervises the investment of the university's endowment, and oversees campus real estate and long-range physical planning. The trustees also exercise prior review and approval concerning changes in major policies such as those in instructional programs and admission as well as tuition and fees and the hiring of faculty members.

The university is composed of the Undergraduate College, the Graduate School, the School of Architecture, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of Public and International Affairs. Additionally, the school's Bendheim Center for Finance provides education for the area of money and finance in lieu of a business school. Princeton hosted a Princeton Law School for a short period, before eventually closing in 1852 due to poor income. Princeton's lack of other professional schools can be attributed to a university focus on undergraduates.

The university has ties with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary, Rutgers University, and the Westminster Choir College of Rider University. Princeton is a member of the Association of American Universities, the Universities Research Association, and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. The university is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), with its last reaffirmation in 2014.

Finances

Princeton University's endowment of $37 billion (per 2021 figures) was ranked as the fourth largest endowment in the United States, and it had the greatest per-student endowment in the world at over $4.4 million per student. The endowment is sustained through continued donations and is maintained by investment advisers. Princeton's operating budget is over $2 billion per year, with 50% going to academic departments and programs, 33% to administrative and student service departments, 10% to financial aid departments, and 7% to the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Academics

Undergraduate

Princeton follows a liberal arts curriculum, and offers two bachelor's degrees to students: a Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (B.S.E.). Typically, A.B. students choose a major (formerly called concentrations) at the end of sophomore year, while B.S.E. students declare at the end of their freshman year. Students must complete distribution requirements, departmental requirements, and independent work to graduate with either degree. A.B. students must complete distribution requirements in literature and the arts, science and engineering, social analysis, cultural difference, epistemology and cognition, ethical thought and moral values, historical analysis, and quantitative and computational reasoning; they must also have satisfactory ability in a foreign language. Additionally, they must complete two papers of independent work during their junior year—known as the junior papers—and craft a senior thesis to graduate; both revolve around the concentration they are pursuing. B.S.E. majors complete fewer courses in the humanities and social sciences and instead fulfill requirements in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer programming. They likewise must complete independent work, which typically involves a design project or senior thesis, but not the junior papers. A.B. majors must complete 31 courses, whereas B.S.E. majors must complete 36 courses.

Students can either choose from 37 majors or create their own. They can also participate in over 60 minors and interdisciplinary certificate programs. Course structure is determined by the instructor and department. Classes vary in their format, ranging from small seminars to medium-sized lecture courses to large lecture courses. The latter two typically have precepts, which are extra weekly discussion sessions that are led by either the professor or a graduate student. The average class meeting time is 3–4 hours a week, although this can vary depending on the course. The student to faculty ratio is 5 to 1, and a majority of classes have fewer than 20 students. In the Fiske Guide to Colleges, academic culture is considered as "tight-knit, extremely hardworking, highly cooperative, and supportive."

From 1893 to 2026, undergraduates had to agree to adhere to an academic integrity policy called the Honor Code. Under the Honor Code, faculty did not proctor examinations; instead, the students proctored one another and were required to report any suspected violation to an Honor Committee made up of undergraduates. The Committee investigated reported violations and held hearings if it was warranted. An acquittal at such a hearing resulted in the destruction of all records of the hearing; a conviction resulted in the student's suspension or expulsion. In 2026, Princeton announced it was ending the Honor Code system and introducing exam supervisors due to an increase in students using artificial intelligence to cheat on exams.

Admissions and financial aid

Admissions

Princeton offers several methods to apply: the Common Application, the Coalition Application, and the QuestBridge Application. Princeton's application requires several writing supplements and submitting a graded written paper.

Princeton's undergraduate program is highly selective, admitting 4.0% of undergraduate applicants in the 2025–2026 admissions cycle (for the Class of 2030). The middle 50% range of SAT scores was 1490–1560, the middle 50% range of the ACT composite score was 34–35, and the average high school GPA was a 3.96. For graduate admissions, in the 2021–2022 academic year, Princeton received 12,553 applications for admission and accepted 1,322 applicants, with a yield rate of 51%.

In the 1950s, Princeton used an ABC system to function as a precursory early program, where admission officers would visit feeder schools and assign A, B, or C ratings to students. From 1977 to 1995, Princeton employed an early action program, and in 1996, transitioned to an early decision program. In September 2006, the university announced that all applicants for the Class of 2012 would be considered in a single pool, ending the school's early decision program. In February 2011, following decisions by the University of Virginia and Harvard University to reinstate their early admissions programs, Princeton announced it would institute a single-choice early action (also known as restrictive early action) option for applicants, which it still uses. Under this program, students generally may not apply to other private colleges or universities early.

Эх сурвалж: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)