Purdue University

Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana. It was founded in 1869 after Indiana accepted Morrill Act funds and Lafayette businessman John Purdue made a gift toward the school, and classes began in 1874. The campus sits on the west bank of the Wabash River, across from Lafayette. The Purdue system also includes Purdue Fort Wayne, Purdue University in Indianapolis and the online Purdue Global.

The West Lafayette campus has colleges of Engineering, Science, Agriculture, Pharmacy, Veterinary Medicine, Health and Human Sciences, Liberal Arts and Education. It also houses the Purdue Polytechnic Institute and the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business. Purdue is best known for aerospace, mechanical, electrical, chemical and agricultural engineering, and for pharmacy. Research sites include the Discovery Park research complex, the Birck Nanotechnology Center, Zucrow Laboratories for propulsion research and the Purdue Research Park.

Purdue enrolls about 50,000 students at West Lafayette, and roughly 11,000 of them are graduate students. International students from more than 130 countries make up about 15 percent of enrollment, with the largest groups from India and China. Chemists Herbert C. Brown and Ei-ichi Negishi won Nobel Prizes while on the faculty, and more than two dozen astronauts studied at Purdue. Alumni include Neil Armstrong, Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan and Orville Redenbacher.

The Graduate School oversees PhD and master's programs. Engineering and science doctoral students are usually supported by research and teaching assistantships, often funded by federal grants and industry partners. Professional master's degrees in business, engineering and technology are offered on campus and online. The academic year runs on semesters. Greater Lafayette has about 230,000 residents and is about an hour northwest of Indianapolis and two hours southeast of Chicago.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Purdue University lists 254 graduate programs across 49 subjects: 125 master's programs and 127 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in education, languages & linguistics and biology. Purdue University holds rank 39 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.