Princeton University

Shirley Tilghman is the current president of Princeton University.

History of the University

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.

About Princeton

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. 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. 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.

Undergraduate program

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 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

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.

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.

Notable Princeton alumni

Notable Princeton professors

Professors who are also Princeton alumni are listed in italics:

• Ben Bernanke - professor of economics and public affairs, member of the Federal Reserve Board
• Alan Blinder A.B. 1967 - professor of economics, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under President Bill Clinton
• Richard Bott - A.B. in Chemical Engineering, current Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley
• John Conway - professor of mathematics
• Robert George - professor of jurisprudence, constitutional law scholar
• Yusef Komunyakaa - poet, professor in the Creative Writing Program (Pulitzer prize for poetry)
• Saul Kripke - professor of philosophy
• Paul Krugman - professor of economics, New York Times columnist
• Paul Lansky - composer, professor of music
• David K. Lewis - professor of philosophy
• John Nash Ph.D 1950 - professor emeritus of mathematics, Nobel laureate (Economics 1994)
• George A. Miller - professor emeritus of psychology, author of the article The Magical Number Seven
• Toni Morrison - professor in the Creative Writing Program, Nobel laureate (Literature 1993)
• Joyce Carol Oates - professor in the Creative Writing Program
• John McPhee A.B. 1953 - Humanities Council professor, 1999 Pulitzer Prize recipient
• Harold Shapiro Ph.D 1964 - professor of economics, president of Princeton until 2001
• Goro Shimura - professor emeritus of mathematics, fundamental contributions to number theory and automorphic forms, especially in Langlands Program
• Yakov G. Sinai - professor of mathematics
• Peter Singer - professor of human values, expert on practical ethics
• Anne-Marie Slaughter A.B. 1980 - professor of politics and international affairs, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, president of the American Society of International Law
• Elias M. Stein - professor of mathematics
• Robert Tarjan - professor of computer science, inventor of many algorithms related to graph theory, winner of the 1986 Turing award, recipient of the 1982 Nevanlinna prize
• Daniel Tsui - professor of applied physics and electrical engineering, Nobel laureate (Physics 1998)
• Cornel West Ph.D 1980 - professor of religion and African American studies
• Andrew Wiles - professor of mathematics, proved Fermat's last theorem

  Traditions

• Arch Sings - Free late night concerts in one of the larger arches on campus offered by one or a few of Princeton's fourteen a capella groups
• Bonfire - ceremonial bonfire, held only if Princeton beats both Harvard and Yale at football in the same season.
• Beer jackets - Each graduating class (and each class at its multiple-of-5 reunion thereafter -- 5th, 10th, etc.) designs a Beer jacket featuring their class year. The artwork is almost invariably dominated by the school colors and tiger motifs
• Bicker - Competitive new-member selection process employed by selective eating clubs
• Cane Spree - an athletic competition between freshmen and sophomores held in the fall
• The Clapper or Clapper Theft - climbing to the top of Nassau Hall and stealing the bell clapper so as to prevent the bell from ringing and, thus, from starting class on the first day of the school year. For safety reasons, the clapper has now been removed permanently.
• Communiversity - an annual street fair with performances, arts and crafts, and other activities, designed to foster interaction between the University and residents of the Princeton community
• Dean's Date Theater - tradition of gathering late in the afternoon on Dean's Date (see below under "Lingo) outside McCosh Hall to watch other students run to hand in their papers before the final deadline. Some students perform cartwheels and other antics (if they are not running too late).
• FitzRandolph Gate - at the end of Princeton's graduation ceremony, the new graduates process out through the main gate of the university as a symbol of their leaving college and entering the real world. According to tradition, anyone who leaves campus through FitzRandolph Gate before their own graduation date will not graduate (though entering through the gate is fine).
• Holder howl - students in Holder Hall dormitory are known to wail, bellow, and screech after studying for hours on any given night
• Houseparties - formal parties thrown simultaneously by all of the eating clubs at the end of the spring term
• Lawnparties - parties with live bands thrown simultaneously by all of the eating clubs at the start of classes
• Newman's Day - students attempt to drink 24 beers in the 24 hours of April 24th, possibly named after Paul Newman
• Nude Olympics - annual frolic in first snow of the winter (now banned)
• Prospect 11 - referring to the act of drinking a beer at every eating club on The Street in one night
• P-rade - traditional parade of alumni (& their families), organized by class year, during Reunions
• Reunions - annual gathering of alumni, held the weekend before graduation
• Robo-pound - unofficial drinking game of Princeton University, along with Beirut. Princeton rules require two teams, one quarter for each team, a hard surface, eight half-full cups, and one pitcher of beer.
  

  Old Nassau