Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university chartered in 1851 by Methodist founders including John Evans, and it opened in 1855. Its main campus of about 240 acres lies on the Lake Michigan shore in Evanston, Illinois, 12 miles north of downtown Chicago. A second campus in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood houses the law and medical schools, and a campus in Doha, Qatar, has operated since 2008. It is the only private university in the Big Ten Conference.

Northwestern has 12 schools and colleges, including the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the McCormick School of Engineering, the Medill School of Journalism, the School of Communication, the Bienen School of Music, the School of Education and Social Policy, the Kellogg School of Management, the Pritzker School of Law, the Feinberg School of Medicine and The Graduate School. Research centers include the International Institute for Nanotechnology and the Institute for Policy Research, and Feinberg is affiliated with Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

The university enrolls about 22,000 students, and graduate and professional students outnumber undergraduates. International students are concentrated in engineering, business and the sciences. Nobel laureates on the faculty have included economists Dale Mortensen and Roger Myerson and chemist Fraser Stoddart. Alumni include comedian Stephen Colbert, author George R. R. Martin and actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Kellogg's MBA formats, including the one-year MBA and the MMM dual degree with McCormick, and Medill's MSJ are among the best-known graduate programs, alongside the JD, MD and a wide range of PhDs. The Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences program is a notable doctoral pathway. The academic year runs on quarters. PhD students typically receive five years of funding. Evanston is a quiet lakefront city, and the CTA Purple Line and Metra reach Chicago in under an hour.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Northwestern University lists 149 graduate programs across 50 subjects: 67 master's programs and 75 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, law and civil engineering. Northwestern University holds rank 23 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.