Princeton University

Motto	Dei sub numine viget (Under God's power she flourishes)
Established	1746
Type	Private
Endowment	US $11.8 billion
Staff	1,103
President	Shirley M. Tilghman
Undergraduates	4,635
Postgraduates	1,975
Location	Princeton, New Jersey USA
Campus	Suburban, 600 acres (2.4 km˛) (Princeton Borough and Township)
Athletics	38 sports teams
Nickname	Tigers
Website	www.princeton.edu

Princeton University is a coeducational private university located on an extensive campus in and around suburban Princeton, New Jersey. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the eight Ivy League universities.^[1] Originally founded at Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it was relocated to Princeton in 1756 and renamed "Princeton University" in 1896.

Princeton is primarily focused on undergraduate education and academic research, although the university also offers some professional Master's degrees and PhD programs in a range of subjects. Princeton's focus on undergraduate education is unusual among leading research universities.^[2] At over eleven million volumes, its library is among the world's largest university libraries. Primary areas of research include anthropology, geophysics, entomology, and robotics, while the Forrestal Campus has special facilities for the study of plasma physics and meteorology.

Originally a Presbyterian institution, Princeton is now non-sectarian and makes no religious demands on its students.^[3]The university has ties with Princeton Theological Seminary and the Westminster Choir College of Rider University.^[4]

 

History of the University

Established by the “New Light" Presbyterians, Princeton was originally intended to train Presbyterian ministers. The college opened at Elizabeth, New Jersey, under the presidency of Jonathan Dickinson as the College of New Jersey. (It was proposed to name it for the colonial Governor, Jonathan Belcher, but he declined.) Its second president was Aaron Burr, Sr.; the third was Jonathan Edwards. In 1756 the college moved to Princeton, New Jersey.

From the time of the move to Princeton in 1756 until the construction of Stanhope Hall in 1803, the University's sole building was Nassau Hall, named for William III of England of the House of Orange-Nassau. The University also got one of its colors, orange, from William III. During the American Revolution, Princeton was occupied by both sides, and the college's buildings were heavily damaged. The Battle of Princeton, fought in a nearby field in January of 1777, proved to be a decisive victory for General George Washington and his troops. Two of Princeton's leading citizens signed the Declaration of Independence, and during the summer of 1783, the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall, making Princeton the country's capital for four months. The much-abused landmark survived bombardment with cannonballs in the Revolutionary War when General Washington struggled to wrest the building from British control, as well as later fires that left only its walls standing 1802 and 1855. Rebuilt by Joseph Henry Latrobe, John Notman, and John Witherspoon, the modern Nassau Hall has been much revised and expanded from the Robert Smith-designed original. Over the centuries, its role shifted from an all-purpose building, comprising office, dormitory, library, and classroom space, to classrooms only, to its present role as the administrative center of the university. Note that the two sculptures in front of the building are not tigers, but lions because the original mascot of the University, including when these sculptures were dedicated, was the lion. The mascot changed to the tiger later in the University's history.^[5]

The Princeton Theological Seminary was separated from Princeton in 1812, since the Presbyterians wanted their ministers to have more theological training, while the faculty and students would have been content with less. This reduced the student body and the external support for Princeton for some time. The two institutions currently enjoy a close relationship based on common history and shared resources.

The university was 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 in the High Victorian Gothic style to the campus.^[6] McCosh Hall is named in his honor.

In 1896, the college officially changed its name from the College of New Jersey to Princeton University to honor the town in which it resided. During this year, the College also underwent large expansion and officially became a university. Under Woodrow Wilson, Princeton introduced the preceptorial system (1905), a then-unique concept that replaced the standard lecture method of teaching with a more personal form where small groups of students, or precepts, could interact with a single instructor, or preceptor, in their field of interest.

In 1930, the Institute for Advanced Study, not affiliated with the University, was founded in Princeton and became the first residential institute for scholars in the country, with Albert Einstein appointed as one of its first professors. The 20th century has seen an influx of scholars, research personnel, and corporations to Princeton from all parts of the world.

In 1969, Princeton University first admitted women as undergraduates. In 1887, the university had actually maintained and staffed a sister college in the town of Princeton on Evelyn and Nassau streets, called the Evelyn College for Women, which was closed after roughly a decade of operation. Years later the administration decided to admit women and turned to the issue of transforming the school's operations and facilities into a female-friendly campus. The administration barely finished these plans by April 1969 when the admission's office had to start mailing out its acceptance letters. Its five-year coeducation plan provided $7.8 million for the development of new facilities that would eventually house and educate 650 women students at Princeton by 1974. Ultimately, 148 women, consisting of 100 freshwomen and transfer students of other years, entered Princeton on September 6, 1969 amidst a frenzy of media ogling and ribbing.

Princeton University has been home to scholars, scientists, writers, and statesmen, including four United States presidents, two of whom graduated from the University. James Madison and Woodrow Wilson graduated from Princeton, Grover Cleveland was not an alumnus but served as a trustee of the University for some time while spending his retirement in the town of Princeton, and John F. Kennedy spent his freshman fall at the University before leaving due to illness and later enrolling at Harvard. The entertainer and civil rights figure Paul Robeson grew up in the Borough of Princeton, and artisans from Italy, Scotland, and Ireland have contributed to the town's architectural history. This legacy, spanning the entire history of American architecture, is preserved through buildings by such architects as Benjamin Latrobe, Ralph Adams Cram, McKim, Mead & White, Robert Venturi, and Nick Yeager.

 

About Princeton

Princeton offers two main undergraduate degrees: the bachelor of arts (A.B.) and the bachelor of science in engineering (B.S.E.). Courses in the humanities are traditionally either seminars or semi-weekly lectures with an additional discussion seminar, called a "precept" (short for "preceptorial"). To graduate, all A.B. candidates must complete a senior thesis and one or two extensive pieces of independent research, known as "junior papers" or "JPs". They must also fulfill a two semester foreign language requirement and distribution requirements. B.S.E. candidates follow a different track with some but fewer distribution requirements that includes a rigorous science and math curriculum and at least two semesters of independent research.

Princeton offers postgraduate research degrees (most notably the Ph.D.), and ranks among the best in many fields, including mathematics, physics, astronomy and plasma physics, economics, history and philosophy. However, it does not have the extensive range of professional postgraduate schools of many other universities—for instance, Princeton has no medical school or business school.^[7] Its most famous professional school is the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (known as "Woody Woo" to students), founded in 1930 as the School of Public and International Affairs and renamed in 1948. The university also offers professional graduate degrees in engineering, architecture and finance.

The university's libraries have over 11 million holdings; the main university library, Firestone Library, housing almost four million volumes, is one of the largest university libraries in the world (and among the largest "open stack" libraries in existence). In addition to Firestone, 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 main library for workspace and the private storage of books and research materials.

The university is also home to the third-largest university chapel in the world, the Princeton University Chapel. Known for its gothic architecture, the chapel houses one of the largest and most precious stained glass collections in the country. Both the Opening Exercises for entering freshmen and the Baccalaureate Service for graduating seniors take place in the University Chapel.

The campus, located on 2 km˛ of landscaped grounds, features a large number of Neo-gothic-style buildings, most dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is situated about one hour from New York City and Philadelphia. Stanhope Hall (once a library, now the police department and communications office) and East and West College, both dormitories, followed. While many of the succeeding buildings -- particularly the dormitories of the Northern campus—were built in a Collegiate Gothic style, the university is something of a mixture of American architectural movements. Greek Revival temples (Whig and Clio Halls) abut the lawn south of Nassau Hall, while a crenellated theater (Murray-Dodge) guards the route west to the library. Modern buildings are confined to the west and south of the campus, a quarter overlooked by the 14-story Fine Hall. Fine, the Math Department's home, designed by Warner, Burns, Toan and Lunde and completed in 1970, is the tallest building at the University.^[8] Contemporary additions feature a number of big-name architects, including IM Pei's Spelman Halls, Robert Venturi's Frist Campus Center, Rafael Vinoly's Carl Icahn Laboratory, and the Hillier Group's Bowen Hall. A residential college by Demetri Porphyrios and a science library by Frank Gehry are under construction. 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, a man-made lake donated by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, used for rowing.

Princeton is among the wealthiest universities in the world, with an endowment just over 11 billion US dollars (#4th largest in the United States) sustained through the continued donations of its alumni and maintained by investment advisors. Some of Princeton's wealth is invested in its art museum, which features works by Claude Monet and Andy Warhol, among other prominent artists.

Princeton consistently ranks among the best universities in the world, and has frequently been ranked number one (#1) by U.S. News and World Report.

Princeton hosts two Model United Nations conferences, PMUNC in the fall for high school students and PICSIM in the spring for college students.

Princeton University also recently purchased a supercomputer, Orangena, from IBM, as of 11/2005 the 79th fastest in the world (LINPACK performance of 4713; compare up to 12250 for other U. S. universities and 280600 for the top-ranked supercomputer, belonging to the U. S. Department of Energy)[3].

 

Financial aid

Princeton University was named by the Princeton Review (which is, despite the name, unaffiliated with the university) as one of the most affordable colleges in the nation. In 2001, Princeton was the first university to eliminate loans for all students who qualify for aid, expanding a program instituted three years earlier in which loans were replaced with grants for low and middle-income students. The move followed a series of enhancements to Princeton's aid program beginning in 1998, which included: admitting international students on a "need-blind" basis along with U.S. students; removing the value of the family home from the formula that calculates how much parents are expected to contribute to college; reducing the contribution rate on student savings; and decreasing summer savings expectations for lower- and middle-income students.

Princeton has no plans to match financial aid initiatives by its peers, Yale and Harvard, which eliminate family contributions altogether for low income students. According to Princeton Director of Financial Aid Don Betterton, "We're satisfied with our program the way it is."^[9]

Princeton is also named by both US News and Princeton Review to have the least number of students graduating with debt. The Office of Financial Aid estimates that Princeton seniors on aid will graduate with average indebtedness of $2,360. That compares to the national average of about $20,000 for graduating seniors who have borrowed, according to the office. Statistics show that for the Class of 2009, close to 60% of the incoming students are on some type of financial aid.

 

Undergraduate program

Undergraduates at Princeton University agree to conform to an academic honesty policy called the Honor Code. Students write and sign the honor pledge, "I pledge my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this examination," on every in-class exam they take at Princeton. The Code carries a second obligation: upon matriculation, every student pledges to report any suspected cheating to the student-run Honor Committee. As a result of this code, students take all tests unsupervised by faculty members. Violations of the Honor Code incur the strongest of disciplinary actions, including suspension and often expulsion. Out-of-class exercises are outside the Honor Committee's jurisdiction, but students are often expected to sign a pledge on their papers that they have not plagiarized their work ("This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations.").

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, because rents in the Princeton area are extremely high. 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 some 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. Despite these policies, Princeton's student body is often regarded as more culturally conservative or traditional than the student bodies of peer institutions. The administration 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 both men's 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 twice hosted the World Universities Debating Championships.

 

Residential colleges

The undergraduate residential colleges are the residential-dining complexes that house freshmen, sophomores, and a handful of junior and senior resident advisers. Each college consists of a set of dormitories, a dining hall (e.g., Ricardo A. Mestres Hall), a variety of other amenities (study spaces, libraries, performance spaces, darkrooms, and the like), and a collection of administrators and associated faculty.

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. The new dormitories will be constructed in the neo-Gothic architectural style and have been designed by renowned architect Demetri Porphyrios.

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.^[10] (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.

Each residential college hosts social events and activities, guest speakers (such as Edward Norton, who showed a special sneak-preview of Fight Club on campus), and trips. Residential Colleges are best known for their performing art trips to New York City. Students sign up to take trips to see the ballet, the opera, and Broadway shows.

 

Athletics

The Princeton Review declared the university the 10th strongest "jock school" in the nation. It has also consistently been ranked at the top of the Time Magazine's Strongest College Sports Teams lists. Most recently, Princeton was ranked as a top 10 school for athletics by Sports Illustrated. Princeton is best known for its men and women's crew teams, winning several NCAAand Eastern titles in recent years.

Princeton has dominated the Ivy league, winning a record 21 conference titles from 2000-2001. At the culmination of 2004, Princeton had garnered a total of 36 Ivy League conference titles from 2001-2004 sports seasons. Most recently in 2005, the Tigers' women's soccer team made the NCAA Final Four, the first Ivy League team to do so. The Tigers have taken every field hockey conference title since 1994.

Princeton's basketball team is perhaps the best known team within the Ivy League, nicknamed the "perennial giant killer". From 1992-2001, a nine year span, Princeton's men's basketball team had entered the NCAA tournament 6 times—from a conference that has never had an at-large entry in the NCAA tournament. For the last half-century, Princeton and Penn have traditionally battled for men's basketball dominance in the Ivy League; Princeton had its first losing season in 50 years of Ivy League basketball in 2005. Princeton tied the record for fewest points in a Division I game since the 3-point line started in 1986-87 when they scored 21 points in a loss against Monmouth University on December 14, 2005.

Princeton's historical place in American Sports along with that of Rutgers is sealed in the first Intercollegiate Football game ever played on the Rutgers campus on November 6, 1869. Rutgers and Princeton today do not compete in Football, as Rutgers plays in Division 1-A while Princeton plays in Division 1-AA. However, the two schools compete in nearly every other sport that both offer and remain rivals.

 

Significant places

 

Nassau Hall

Nassau Hall is the main administrative building of the University. For more information on this historic building, please see the main article, Nassau Hall.

 

Cannon Green

Cannon Green is located on the south end of the main lawn. Buried in the ground at the center is the "Big Cannon", the top of which protrudes from the earth and is traditionally spray-painted in orange with the current senior class year. A second "Little Cannon" is buried in the lawn in front of nearby Whig Hall. Both were buried in response to periodic thefts by Rutgers students. The "Big Cannon" is said to have been left in Princeton by Hessians after the Revolutionary War but moved to New Brunswick during the War of 1812. Ownership of the cannon was disputed and the cannon was eventually taken back to Princeton partly by a military company and then by 100 Princeton students. The "Big Cannon" was eventually buried in its current location in front of Nassau Hall in 1840. In 1875, Rutgers students attempting to recover the original cannon stole the "Little Cannon" instead. The smaller cannon was subsequently recovered and buried as well. The protruding cannons are occasionally painted scarlet by Rutgers students who continue the traditional dispute.^[11]

The Academy Award winning movie, A Beautiful Mind, contains a scene on Cannon Green. John Nash plays Go with his college rival while sitting on stone benches in the middle of the green. (The benches do not exist; like many elements of the Princeton setting, they were introduced for the film.)

 

McCarter Theatre

McCarter Theatre is recognized as one of this country's leading regional theaters. Under the Artistic Direction of Emily Mann, the Tony Award-winning McCarter Theatre has demonstrated a commitment to the highest professional standards. McCarter's vision is to create a theater of testimony, engaged in a dialogue with the world around it, paying tribute to the enduring power of the human spirit and scope of the imagination.

A hallmark of the Theater Series is the creation of new work. Since 1991, over 20 new plays and adaptations have had their World or American premieres at McCarter including: Emily Mann's Having Our Say, Athol Fugard's Valley Song, John Henry Redwood's The Old Settler, and Stephen Wadworth's adaptations of Marivaux. McCarter premieres have been produced in cities across the country. In the past, the shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and Joseph Kesserling's Arsenic and Old Lace made their world premieres at McCarter.

McCarter Theater is also the unofficial home of the famous Princeton Triangle Club, a comedy theater troupe whose alumni include Brooke Shields and Academy Award-winning actor Jimmy Stewart.

 

Princeton University Art Museum

Princeton University Art Museum was to give students direct, intimate, and sustained access to original works of art to complement and enrich the instruction and research at the University, and this continues to be its primary function.

Numbering nearly 60,000 objects, the collections range chronologically from ancient to contemporary art, and concentrate geographically on the Mediterranean regions, Western Europe, China, the United States, and Latin America. There is a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, including ceramics, marbles, bronzes, and Roman mosaics from Princeton University’s excavations in Antioch. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture, metalwork, and stained glass. The collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the early Renaissance through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art.

Among the strengths in the museum are the collections of Chinese art, with important holdings in bronzes, tomb figurines, painting, and calligraphy; and pre-Columbian art, with examples of the art of the Maya. The museum has collections of old master prints and drawings and a comprehensive collection of original photographs. African art is represented as well as Northwest Coast Indian art. Other works include those of the John B. Putnam, Jr., Memorial Collection of twentieth-century sculpture, including works by such modern masters as Alexander Calder, Jacques Lipshitz, Henry Moore, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso.

 

Admissions

In 2006, Princeton's overall acceptance rate was 10.2%, accepting 1792 students from a pool of 17,563 applicants. 599 of these were accepted Early Decision out of a total 2236 ED applicants, for a 26.8% Early Decision acceptance rate. Regular Decision was much harsher, with acceptances going to only 1193 out of 15327 applicants (this includes deferred ED students as well), for a 7.8% admittance rate.

 

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 cappella groups. Most often held in Blair Arch or Class of 1879 Arch.
• Bonfire - ceremonial bonfire, held only if Princeton beats both Harvard and Yale at football in the same season, which hasn't happened since 1994.
• 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 in an attempt 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 and bellow at the top of their lungs towards the Holder courtyard on midnight of the first days during the final exam period.
• 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 and conclusion of the year
• Newman's Day - students attempt to drink 24 beers in the 24 hours of April 24th, origins of the day are shrouded in mystery; may be named after Paul Newman. Newman has spoken out against the tradition, however. ^[12]
• Nude Olympics - annual (nude) frolic in Holder Courtyard during the first snow of the winter. Started in the early 1970s, the Nude Olympics went co-ed in 1989 and gained much notoriety with the American press. For safety reasons, the administration banned the Olympics in 2000.
• Prospect 11 - referring to the act of drinking a beer at all eleven eating clubs on The Street in one night. With the recent closure of Campus Club, this has become impossible, but the phrase "Prospect 10" has yet to firmly plant itself in the lexicon.
• P-rade - traditional parade of alumni and their families, who process by class year, during Reunions
• Reunions - annual gathering of alumni, held the weekend before graduation
• Robo - commonly played team drinking game at Princeton University, thought to have originated there. Beirut is equally popular.
• The Phantom of Fine Hall - a former tradition - before 1993, this was the legend of an obscure, shadowy figure who would infest Fine Hall (the Mathematics department's building) and write complex equations on blackboards. Although mentioned in Rebecca Goldstein's 1980s book The Mind-Body Problem about Princeton graduate student life (Penguin, reissued 1993), the legend self-deconstructed in the 1990s when the Phantom turned out to be in reality the inventor, in the 1950s, of the Nash Equilibrium result in game theory, John Forbes Nash. The former Phantom, by then also haunting the computation center where courtesy of handlers in the math department he was a sacred monster with a guest account, shared the 1994 Nobel prize and is now a recognized member of the University community. (Unlike the book, the film version of A Beautiful Mind does not attempt to be factual; its screenwriter called it "a stab at the truth… but not by way of the facts.")

 

Old Nassau

This phrase can refer to:

• Old Nassau, Princeton's alma mater since 1859, with words by then-freshman Harlan Page Peck and music by Karl A. Langlotz. The text of Old Nassau is available from Wikisource.
• Nassau Hall, to which the song refers, built in 1756 and named after William III of England, of the House of Orange-Nassau. When built, it was the largest college building in North America. It served briefly as the capitol of the United States when the Continental Congress convened there in the summer of 1783.
• By metonymy, Princeton University as a whole.
• A chemical reaction, an example of a "clock reaction", dubbed "Old Nassau" because the solution turns first orange and then black, the Princeton colors. It is also known as the "Hallowe'en reaction".

 

Princeton neologisms

• Bicker - the process by which students join selective eating clubs, similar to fraternity/sorority rush at other schools.
• D-Bar - the debasement bar, appropriately located in the basement of the Old Graduate College, is a hangout for grad students and local au pairs, dimly-lit location for the purchase of cheap alcohol.
• Dean's Date - The last day of reading period; the day when all final papers and other written work must be turned in (see also "Dean's Date Theater" above in the "Traditions" section). Exams start the day after Dean's Date. So named because extensions beyond Dean's Date cannot be granted by a faculty member; they require the permission of a Dean.
• Dinky - One-car train that runs between Princeton Junction and Princeton station, a small rail station on the Princeton campus. Sometimes called the PJ & B (Princeton Junction & Back).
• Getting McCoshed - when a student is sent to McCosh Infirmary (not to be confused with the McCosh Hall) for excessive drinking.
• Getting PMC'ed - when a student is hospitalized for drinking too much alcohol. In this case, a student is deemed too drunk to be treated by McCosh Infirmary and is instead transferred to Princeton Medical Center. The future of this lingo is uncertain due to Princeton Medical Center's recent name change to University Medical Center at Princeton.
• Hose - As a transitive verb, to be rejected from a selective organization, e.g., in eating club bicker, interviews for selective courses, etc. (i.e. "You got hosed!").
• Intersession - The one-week break between winter finals and the start of the spring semester. Often the time when seniors hunker down to begin writing their senior thesis.
• Junior Slums - Area of undergraduate housing in the southwest part of campus. Includes Henry Hall, Foulke Hall, 1901 Hall, Pyne Hall, Laughlin Hall and Lockhart Hall. So called because these are the dormitories that are usually left over from senior Room Draw and are thus taken by the juniors.
• Locomotive - Distinctive Princeton cheer... "'hip, hip, rah, 'rah, 'rah, tiger, tiger, tiger, sis, sis, sis, boom boom boom ahhhhhhh. Princeton. Princeton. Princeton". (The 'Princeton' is interchangeable - It's common to replace "Princeton" with a class year to toast a particular class, especially during the P-rade, or during football games for the cheerleaders to say 'Tigers". Interesting side note: this is also the oldest cheer in the country; Princeton is the home of cheerleading, amongst other things.)
• The Nass - affectionate slang for The Nassau Weekly, a weekly arts and humor magazine. (See its website).
• Old Nassau - see previous section.
• Precept - short for "preceptorial." A small seminar-style discussion group held as an adjunct to formal lectures.
• The Prince - The Daily Princetonian, the daily campus newspaper (See its website). Also known as the Gaily Prints-Anything, the traditional masthead of its hoax issues.
• The Princeton Progressive Nation - The Princeton Progressive Nation, progressive monthly magazine (See its website).
• Prospect 11 - A tradition in which undergraduates visit all eleven currently-active eating clubs and drink a beer from each one. The number is variable, based on the number of eating clubs in operation. For example, it was known as the Prospect 13 in the 1970's and 80's. Since September, 2005, and the closing of Campus Club, this tradition has been unceremoniously renamed the Prospect 10.
• Prox - Proximity card. RFID-based access control card used to unlock dorms and other non-public areas.
• Pton - Common abbreviation for the school's name.
• Reading Period - A ten-day study period between the end of classes and the beginning of exams in January and May.
• The Street - Prospect Avenue, home of the eating clubs.
• The Tory - The Princeton Tory, conservative bimonthly magazine (See its website).
• The Wa - The local Wawa convenience store and food market. A Wa Run is a trip there.
• Woody Woo - Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

The Daily Princetonian hosts a detailed (if slightly dated) list of Princeton jargon.

 

Lists of Princeton people

Presidents

• Princeton University is led by a President selected by the Board of Trustees. A number of noted American statesmen, clerics, and revolutionaries led the University in the eighteenth century; today, the office is usually held by prominent academics.

  1. Jonathan Dickinson 1747
  2. Aaron Burr, Sr. 1748-1757 (Elected 1748, effectively in charge since 1747 [1])
  3. Jonathan Edwards 1758
  4. Samuel Davies 1759-1761
  5. Samuel Finley 1761-1766
  6. John Witherspoon 1768-1794
  7. Samuel Stanhope Smith 1795-1812
  8. Ashbel Green 1812-1822
  9. James Carnahan 1823-1854
  10. John Maclean, Jr. 1854-1868
  11. James McCosh 1868-1888
  12. Francis L. Patton 1888-1902
  13. Woodrow Wilson 1902-1910
  14. John G. Hibben 1912-1932
  15. Harold W. Dodds 1933-1957
  16. Robert F. Goheen 1957-1972
  17. William G. Bowen 1972-1988
  18. Harold T. Shapiro 1988-2001
  19. Shirley M. Tilghman 2001-present
  

  Alumni

  Academia

  * Loring Danforth Ph.D. 1977 - anthropologist at Bates College.
  * Livingston Farrand A.B. 1888 - former president of Cornell University
  * Robert Goheen A.B. 1940, M.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1948 - former president of Princeton, former U.S. Ambassador to India
  * Elena Kagan A.B. 1981 - dean of Harvard Law School
  * William J. Lennox, Jr. M.A., Ph.D. - current Superintendent, United States Military Academy
  * Alan Lightman A.B. 1970 - physicist and novelist, professor at MIT
  * Gregory Mankiw A.B. 1980 - economist, professor at Harvard University
  * James Manning A.B. 1762 - Co-founder of the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University) and served as its first president from 1765 to 1791; Rhode Island's delegate to the Continental Congress in 1786.
  * Neil Rudenstine A.B. 1956 - former president of Harvard University
  * George Rupp A.B. 1964 - former president of Columbia University
  * Edward W. Said A.B. 1956 - literary theorist, critic, Palestinian activist, professor of literature (Columbia University)
  * Ruth Simmons Hon. 1998 - first female and first black president of any Ivy League school (Brown)
  * Cornel West Ph.D 1980 - professor of religion and African American studies

   

  Government / Law / Public policy
  

  Presidents

  * James Madison A.B. 1771 - 4th President of the United States
  * Syngman Rhee Ph.D. - 1st president of the Republic of Korea, 1st president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea
  * Woodrow Wilson A.B. 1879 - 28th President of the United States, 13th president of Princeton University and Governor of New Jersey
  * John F. Kennedy Class of 1939, but left after first semester for medical reasons - 35th President of the United States

   

  Vice-Presidents

  * Aaron Burr A.B. 1772 - 3rd Vice President of the United States
  * John C. Breckinridge A.B. ? - 14th Vice President of the United States
  * George M. Dallas A.B. 1810 - 11th Vice Presidents of the United States

   

  Governors

  * John Forsyth A.B. 1799 - 35th Governor of Georgia
  * Adlai E. Stevenson A.B. 1922 - 33rd Governor of Illinois, Democratic Presidential candidate, and United Nations ambassador
  * Dewey F. Bartlett A.B. 1942 - 19th Governor of Oklahoma
  * Kit Bond A.B. 1960 - 47th and 49th Governor of Missouri
  * Mitch Daniels A.B. 1971 - 47th Governor of Indiana
  * William Patterson A.B. 1763 - Governor of New Jersey
  * Aaron Ogden A.B. 1773 - Governor of New Jersey
  * Mahlon Dickerson A.B. 1789 - Governor of New Jersey
  * Samuel Lewis Southard A.B. 1804 - Governor of New Jersey
  * William Pennington A.B. 1813 - Governor of New Jersey
  * Daniel Haines A.B. 1820 - Governor of New Jersey
  * Woodrow Wilson A.B. 1879 - Governor of New Jersey, listed above under Presidents
  * Brendan Byrne A.B. 1949 - Governor of New Jersey
  * Thomas Kean A.B. ? - Governor of New Jersey
  * Bob Ehrlich A.B. 1979 - 60th Governor of Maryland
  * William Richardson Davie 1776 - Governor of North Carolina
  * James G. Martin 1985 - 1993 Governor of North Carolina

   

  Senators

  * William Paterson A.B. 1763 - U.S. Senator from New Jersey, listed under Governors
  * Aaron Burr A.B. 1772 - U.S. Senator from New York, listed under Vice-Presidents
  * Aaron Ogden A.B. 1773 - U.S. Senator from New Jersey, listed under Governors
  * Jonathan Dayton A.B. 1776 - U.S. Senator from New Jersey, signer of the Constitution
  * Edward Livingston A.B. 1781 - U.S. Senator from Louisiana
  * Mahlon Dickerson A.B. 1789 - U.S. Senator from New Jersey, listed under Governors
  * John Forsyth A.B. 1799 - U.S. Senator from Georgia, listed under Governors
  * Samuel Lewis Southard A.B. 1804 - U.S. Senator from New Jersey, listed under Governors
  * George M. Dallas A.B. 1810 - U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, listed under Vice-Presidents
  * Claiborne Pell A.B. 1940 - U.S. Senator from Rhode Island
  * Dewey F. Bartlett A.B. 1942 - U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, listed under Governors
  * Paul Sarbanes A.B. 1954 - U.S. Senator from Maryland
  * John Danforth A.B. 1958 - U.S. Senator from Missouri, United States Ambassador to the UN
  * Kit Bond A.B. 1960 - U.S. Senator from Missouri, listed under Governors
  * Bill Bradley A.B. 1965 - U.S. Senator from New Jersey
  * Bill Frist A.B. 1974 - U.S. Senator from Tennessee, Senate Majority Leader

   

  Congressmen

  * Jonathan Dayton A.B. 1776 - U.S. Congressman from New Jersey, 3rd Speaker of the House of Representatives, listed above under Senators
  * James Madison A.B. 1771 - U.S. Congressman from Virginia, listed above under Presidents
  * Edward Livingston A.B. 1781 - U.S. Congressman from Louisiana, listed above under Senators
  * John Forsyth A.B. 1799 - U.S. Congressman from Georgia, listed above under Governors
  * James Moore Wayne A.B. 1808 - U.S. Congressman from Georgia
  * Paul Sarbanes A.B. 1954 - U.S. Congressman from Maryland, listed above under Senators
  * Donald Rumsfeld A.B. 1954 - U.S. Congressman from Illinois
  * Jim Leach A.B. 1964 - U.S. Congressman from Iowa
  * Bob Ehrlich A.B. 1979 - U.S. Congressman from Maryland, listed under Governors
  * Jim Marshall A.B. 1972 - U.S. Congressman from Georgia

   

  Attorneys General

  * Nicholas Katzenbach A.B. 1945
  * Benjamin H. Brewster A.B. 1834
  * John M. Berrien A.B. 1796
  * Richard Rush A.B. 1797
  * Robert Smith A.B. 1781
  * Charles Lee A.B. 1775
  * William Bradford A.B. 1772

   

  Solicitors General

  * Charles Fried A.B. 1956
  * William Marshall Bullit A.B. 1894

   

  State Attorneys General

  * Eliot Spitzer A.B. 1981 - New York Attorney General
  * Luther Martin A.B. 1766 - Maryland Attorney General
  * John Marshall Harlan A.B. 1920 - Kentucky Attorney General

   

  Supreme Court Justices

  * Samuel Alito A.B. 1972 - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice 2006-present, chosen by George W. Bush
  * Henry Brockholst Livingston A.B. 1774 - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice 1806-1823
  * Oliver Ellsworth A.B. 1766 - U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice 1796-1800
  * William Paterson A.B. 1763 - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice 1793-1806, listed above under Governors
  * John Marshall Harlan II A.B. 1920 - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice 1955-1971
  * William Johnson A.B. 1790 - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice 1804-1834
  * Mahlon Pitney A.B. 1879 - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice 1912-1922
  * Smith Thompson A.B. 1788 - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice 1823-1843
  * James Moore Wayne A.B. 1808 - U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice 1835-1867, listed above under Congressmen

   

  Cabinet Members

  * James Madison A.B. 1771 - Secretary of State under President Thomas Jefferson, listed above under Presidents
  * Robert Smith A.B. 1781 - Secretary of State under President James Madison, listed above under Attorneys General
  * Edward Livingston A.B. 1781 - Secretary of State under President Andrew Jackson, listed above under Senators
  * John Forsyth A.B. 1799 - Secretary of State under Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren, listed under Governors
  * John Foster Dulles A.B. 1908 - Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower
  * George Shultz A.B. 1942 - Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan
  * James Baker A.B. 1952 - Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush
  * W. Michael Blumenthal PhD - Secretary of Treasury under President Jimmy Carter
  * James V. Forrestal Class of 1915 (did not graduate) - Secretary of Defense under Harry Truman
  * Frank Carlucci A.B. 1952 - Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan
  * Donald Rumsfeld A.B. 1954 - Secretary of Defense under Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, listed under Congressmen

   

  Chief of Staff

  * Joshua B. Bolten A.B. 1976. White House Chief of Staff under President George W. Bush.

   

  C.I.A. Directors

  * Allen Dulles A.B. 1914, M.A. 1916 - director of the CIA under President Dwight D. Eisenhower
  * William Colby A.B. 1940 - director of the CIA under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford

   

  Other

  * George F. Kennan A.B. 1925 - Cold War diplomat, architect of "containment" strategy.
  * Robert Mueller 1966 - 18th Director of the F.B.I.
  * Ralph Nader A.B. 1955 - Green Party presidential candidate
  * Richard Perle M.A. 1967 - neo-conservative policy expert
  * Richard Riordan A.B. 1952 - mayor of Los Angeles, 1993-2001
  * 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
  * Ronald I. Spiers M.A. 1950 - retired U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas and diplomat
  * Paul Volcker A.B. 1949 - 12th Federal Reserve Chairman
  * Katrina vanden Heuvel A.B. 1981 - editor of The Nation

   

  Business

  * James T. Aubrey, Jr. A.B. 1941 - president of CBS and MGM
  * Jeff Bezos B.S.E. 1986 - founder of Amazon.com
  * Frank Biondi A.B. 1963 - former chairman of Viacom
  * Richard Bott - A.B. in Chemical Engineering, current Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley
  * Ralph Denunzio A.B. 1953 - former CEO of Kidder, Peabody & Co.
  * Malcolm Forbes A.B. 1941 - businessman and publisher
  * Steve Forbes A.B. 1970 - son of Malcolm Forbes, businessman and publisher of Forbes magazine
  * Irvine O. Hockaday, Jr. A.B. 1954 - Former President and CEO, Hallmark Cards; Former President and CEO, Kansas City Southern Industries; Member or Former Member of the Board, Kansas City Southern Industries, Ford Motor Company, Dow Jones & Co., Aquila, Inc., Sprint, Estee Lauder; Former Chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
  * Carl Icahn A.B. 1957 - Corporate raider
  * F. Thomson Leighton B.S.E. 1978 - cofounder of Akamai Technologies
  * James S. McDonnell B.S 1921 - founded McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in 1939
  * Louis Rukeyser A.B. 1954 - former host of Wall $treet Week and business commentator
  * Eric Schmidt B.S.E. 1976 - CEO of Google
  * Ralph Warner A.B. 1963 - pioneer in the legal self-help book industry, co-founder of Nolo Press
  * Meg Whitman A.B. 1977 - CEO of eBay
  * Peter Lewis A.B. 1955 - Chairman of Progressive

   

  Economics

  * Gary Becker A.B. 1951 - Nobel laureate (Economics 1992)
  * 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
  * James Heckman M.A. 1968, Ph.D 1971 - Nobel laureate (Economics 2000)
  * Harold Shapiro, Ph.D 1964 - professor of economics, president of Princeton until 2001
  * Michael Spence A.B. 1966 - Nobel laureate (Economics 2001)

   

  Science and Technology
  

  Astronauts

  * James C. Adamson S.M. 1977
  * Daniel T. Barry A.M. 1977, Masters in Engineering 1977, Ph.D. 1980
  * Charles Conrad, Jr. S.B. 1953, M.A. (h.c.) 1966
  * Gregory T. Linteris S.B. 1979, Ph.D. 1990

   

  Engineering

  * Hal Abelson, A.B. 1969 - directed implementation of the Logo programming language for the Apple II, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT
  * Alonzo Church, A.B. 1924, Ph.D.1927 - mathematician known for the Church-Turing thesis, developed the lambda calculus that exposed the "undecideability" problem and influenced the Lisp programming language
  * Charles "Pete" Conrad, B.S.E. 1953 - astronaut, third man to walk on the moon
  * Brian Kernighan Ph.D 1969, electrical engineering. Professor, computer science. Co-inventor of the awk programming language, and co-author of the definitive textbook The C Programming Language.
  * Michael Stonebraker, S.B. 1965 - pioneer researcher in relational databases, founder of Ingres (acquired by Computer Associates) and Illustra Information Technologies (acquired by Informix) and initiator of PostgreSQL
  * Alan Turing Ph.D 1938 - pioneering computer scientist, formulated the Turing machine and the Turing test. The Turing award is named in his honor.
  * Robert Venturi A.B. 1947, M.F.A. 1950 - architect, Pritzker Prize laureate 1991
  * Red Whittaker B.S. 1973 - Fredkin Professor of Robotics, Director of the Field Robotics Center, and founder of the National Robotics Engineering Consortium, all at Carnegie Mellon University; Chief Scientist of RedZone Robotics.
  * Avi Wigderson Ph.D 1983 - theoretical computer scientist at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Nevanlinna Prize laureate 1994

   

  Mathematics

  Many prominent scientists, most famously Albert Einstein, worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, a research facility in Princeton, New Jersey not formally associated with the University but closely linked to it.

  * John Bardeen Ph.D 1936- Nobel laureate (Physics 1956 and 1972)
  * Manjul Bhargava Ph.D 2001 - Mathematician, professor at Princeton University
  * George Boolos, A.B. 1961 - Philosopher/lo