Harvard University, located just outside of Boston in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is perennially ranked as one of America's top three universities; it currently stands at number one in the US News listing, alongside Princeton. Harvard is also America's oldest university, founded in 1636.
Harvard currently hires over 2,000 faculty and has a total enrollment of 6,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students. For its undergraduate program, Harvard accepted just 7% of all applicants for its class of 2013, a record low. Numbers are equally competitive to get into Harvard Law and Harvard Medical School, two of America's top programs in their respective fields.
Harvard University
12 Quincy St
Cambridge, MA?
(617) 495-1551
harvard.edu
Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey, is currently tied with Harvard for first in the US News university rankings. Princeton is generally smaller than its rivals; total undergraduate enrollment is 5,000, while graduates make up another 2,500 students. Princeton is the nation's fourth oldest school of higher learning, and admission is slightly less competitive than Harvard, as just under 10% of undergrad applicants were admitted for their most recent class. Unique Princeton features include \"precepts,\" short for preceptorials, or small discussion seminars, and eating clubs, fraternity-like institutions at which the majority of students dine every day.
Princeton University
Nassau Hall
Princeton, NJ?
(609) 258-3000
princeton.edu
Yale University, founded in 1701 in New Haven, Connecticut, is currently ranked as the third best university in the United States, admitting about 8.5% of undergraduate applicants. Yale's endowment of $16.3 billion, outranked only by Harvard, allows the university to provide massive amounts of funding to all sorts of projects and hand out unparalleled financial aid. Yale houses 12 residential colleges, closely modeled on the collegiate system employed at Oxford and Cambridge. Understood to be slightly more liberal and less stodgy than Harvard and Princeton, Yale is considered by many to be America's best school for free thinkers, particularly in the humanities.
Yale University
180 York Street
New Haven, CT?
(203) 432-2288?
yale.edu