About Us

Northwestern University (NU) is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest chartered university in Illinois. The university has its main campus along the shores of Lake Michigan in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Chartered by the Illinois General Assembly in 1851, Northwestern was initially affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church but later became non-sectarian. By 1900, the university was the third-largest university in the United States. Northwestern became a founding member of the Big Ten Conference in 1896 and joined the Association of American Universities in 1917.

Northwestern is composed of eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools which includes Kellogg School of Management, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences among others. In addition to the Evanston campus, it has campuses in downtown Chicago, Coral Gables, San Francisco, Doha, and Washington, D.C.

As of 2023, the university had an endowment of $14.1 billion, an annual budget of around $2.9 billion. and research funding of over $1 billion. The university fields 19 intercollegiate athletic teams, the Northwestern Wildcats, which compete in the NCAA Division I in the Big Ten Conference.