Princeton University is a private research university located in three municipalities in the Princeton area of New Jersey, United States. The school, located within the boundaries of Borough of Princeton, Princeton Township, and West Windsor Township, is one of the eight universities that compose the Ivy League.
Originally founded in 1746 at Elizabeth, New Jersey, as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and was renamed “Princeton University” in 1896.[5] Princeton was the fourth institution of higher education in the U.S. to conduct classes.[6][7] The university, unlike most American universities that were founded at the same time, did not have an official religious affiliation. At one time, it had close ties to the Presbyterian Church, but today it is nonsectarian and makes no religious demands of its students.[8][9] The university has ties with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Westminster Choir College of Rider University.[10]
Though Princeton University has traditionally focused on undergraduate education, it has almost two thousand five hundred graduate students[11] enrolled, and its Carnegie classification is "research university."[12] Although lacking medical, law, or business schools, it offers professional master's degrees (mostly through the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) and doctoral programs in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, as well as engineering. In addition to the research conducted on the main campus, the Forrestal Campus has special facilities for the study of plasma physics and meteorology.
