Princeton University

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey. It was chartered in 1746 as the College of New Jersey in Elizabeth, moved to Newark, and settled in Princeton in 1756, when Nassau Hall was completed. It took its current name in 1896. Princeton has no schools of medicine, law or business. That keeps its focus on undergraduate teaching and doctoral research in the arts and sciences and engineering.

Its graduate and professional units include the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Architecture, and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. The Bendheim Center for Finance offers a master's in finance. Princeton is best known for mathematics, physics, economics, philosophy, history and molecular biology. It manages the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory for the US Department of Energy and hosts the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and the High Meadows Environmental Institute. The Institute for Advanced Study is nearby but independent.

Princeton enrolls about 9,000 students, of whom about 3,200 are graduate students. International students make up roughly 40 percent of graduate enrollment. More than 70 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university as faculty, researchers or alumni. Alumni include President James Madison, mathematician Alan Turing, who earned his PhD there, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The Graduate School is mainly a doctoral school. Admitted PhD students are fully funded for the regular length of their program, and after coursework they pass a general examination before dissertation research under faculty advisers. Professional degrees include the MPA and MPP at the School of Public and International Affairs, the MFin, and the MSE and MArch. The university runs on semesters. Many graduate students live in the Graduate College, which opened in 1913, and New York and Philadelphia are both reachable by train.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Princeton University lists 71 graduate programs across 29 subjects: 16 master's programs and 54 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, public policy & administration and languages & linguistics. Princeton University holds rank 4 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.