Youth colleges: August 2015

Loyola University Maryland

Loyola University Maryland is a private institution that was founded in 1852. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 4,004, its setting is urban, and the campus size is 80 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Loyola University Maryland's ranking in the 2015 edition of Best Colleges is Regional Universities (North), 3. Its tuition and fees are $44,255 (2014-15).

Loyola University Maryland is a Jesuit university located in Baltimore. Students can get involved with any of the more than 170 clubs and organizations on campus, such as the Evergreen Players theater group or The Greyhound, Loyola's student newspaper. The school's recreation and fitness programs are housed in the state-of-the-art Fitness and Aquatics Center, which features a climbing wall, pool, sauna, hot tub and racquetball and squash courts, among other facilities. Loyola's varsity teams, known as the Greyhounds, compete at the NCAA Division I level. Only freshmen are required to live on campus, but about 80 percent of students choose to remain on campus all four years. Loyolapalooza, an annual springtime festival, is a popular tradition with activities, rides and performances.

Loyola organizes its academic programs into three schools: the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Education and Sellinger School of Business and Management. Undergraduates can choose from more than 30 majors and must complete the core curriculum. Loyola also offers graduate programs in each of its three schools. About 50 first-year students are admitted into the Honors Program each year, which provides a more challenging curriculum and a variety of benefits like free tickets to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra or a paid trip to New York. More than 60 percent of students study abroad through one of Loyola's sponsored programs or one of the accepted unaffiliated programs.

Rollins College

Rollins College is a private institution that was founded in 1885. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 1,890, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 80 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Rollins College's ranking in the 2015 edition of Best Colleges is Regional Universities (South), 2. Its tuition and fees are $43,080 (2014-15).

Rollins College is located in Winter Park, Florida, a few minutes from downtown Orlando. There are more than 100 student clubs and organizations on campus, including a wakeboarding club and a ballroom dancing club. The Tars, Rollins' athletic teams, compete in the NCAA Division II Sunshine State Conference. The school even fields a varsity waterskiing team. Greek life on campus comprises about 10 fraternities and sororities. The majority of students live on campus in one of the residence halls or apartment complexes. Fox Day – a popular campus tradition – occurs on a randomly chosen day in the spring when the college president places a statue of the Rollins fox on Mills Lawn, indicating that all classes have been canceled for the day.

Undergraduates at Rollins can choose from about 30 majors, ranging from Latin American and Caribbean studies to computer science to theatre arts. In addition to its undergraduate programs, Rollins offers an MBA program through the Crummer Graduate School of Business. Other master's programs offered include teaching, human resources and liberal studies. The "Walk of Fame" at Rollins is lined with stones from the homes of legendary historical figures: Maya Angelou, Confucius and Martin Luther King Jr., to name a few.

Samford University

Samford University is a private institution that was founded in 1841. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 3,013, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 318 acres. It utilizes a 4-1-4-based academic calendar. Samford University's ranking in the 2015 edition of Best Colleges is Regional Universities (South), 3. Its tuition and fees are $27,324 (2014-15).

Samford University is a Christian institution located in Birmingham, Ala., in the central region of the state. Students at Samford can choose from more than 130 majors, minors, and concentrations, including master’s degree programs in the Brock School of Business, the Cumberland School of Law, and the Orlean Bullard Beeson School of Education and Professional Studies. Samford is the largest private university in Alabama, but its class sizes are small, and no courses are taught by graduate assistants.

Many students at Samford University participate in school traditions, such as the Spring Fling celebration with games and music on the quad, and the Miss Samford pageant, which is one of the preliminary competitions for the Miss Alabama and Miss America Pageants. Students can also get involved by exploring more than 125 campus clubs and playing for the Samford University Bulldogs varsity sports teams, which compete in the NCAA Division I Southern Conference. Notable Samford University alumni include actor Tony Hale, who starred in the television show Arrested Development.

Loyola University Maryland

Fairfield University

Fairfield University is a private institution that was founded in 1942. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 3,873, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 200 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Fairfield University's ranking in the 2015 edition of Best Colleges is Regional Universities (North), 3. Its tuition and fees are $43,770 (2014-15).

Fairfield University is a Jesuit school located on the shoreline of Connecticut, about 60 miles from New York City. At Fairfield, students can choose from more than 40 undergraduate majors and dozens of advanced degrees, including those in the Dolan School of Business or the nursing school. Fairfield encourages students to explore the arts by bringing numerous performers to campus each year. In Fairfield's various venues and theaters, students can see dance troupes, musical acts, magic shows, acrobatics, live radio dramas and traveling art exhibits.

Students can also explore about 80 campus organizations or jump on a train for an hour to New York. Fairfield also has many club and intramural sports and 20 Stags varsity teams, which mainly compete in the NCAA Division I Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Notable alumni include Carmen Wong Ulrich, former host of the CNBC show "On the Money," and actor Paul Marcarelli, famed for asking, “Can you hear me now?” in numerous Verizon Wireless commercials.

College of New Jersey

College of New Jersey is a public institution that was founded in 1855. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 6,653, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 289 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. College of New Jersey's ranking in the 2015 edition of Best Colleges is Regional Universities (North), 3. Its in-state tuition and fees are $15,024 (2014-15); out-of-state tuition and fees are $25,637 (2014-15).

The College of New Jersey, also called TCNJ, is located near Trenton. TCNJ is selective with admissions and offers more than 50 undergraduate programs in seven schools. Graduate students can choose from several different degrees, including those in thehealth field. On campus, TCNJ students can see shows at two theaters, hear a performance at the music hall, observe art at the gallery or get on the air at the school's television and radio stations.

Students can also get involved with TCNJ's more than 150 student organizations or participate in events such as Community Fest, where they gather to teach and entertain local children. There are also several opportunities for student athletes at the intramural, club and varsity levels. The blue and gold TCNJ Lions intercollegiate sports teams compete in the NCAA Division III New Jersey Athletic Conference. Notable TCNJ alumni include Holly Black, author of the New York Times bestselling children’s books, "The Spiderwick Chronicles."

Providence College

Providence College is a private institution that was founded in 1917. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 3,810, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 105 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Providence College's ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is Regional Universities (North), 2. Its tuition and fees are $42,206 (2013-14).

Providence College, located in Providence, Rhode Island, is the only college in the nation operated by Dominican Friars. The Slavin Center, the school's student union, houses a concert/lecture hall, student organization offices, a food court and McPhail's, a snack bar and hangout spot equipped with dance floor, pool tables and a projector-screen TV. There are more than 100 clubs and organizations on campus, and students can also create a team to compete in Battle of the Brains, an annual question and answer game-show-style tournament. Freshmen and sophomores are required to live on campus in one of the residence halls, most of which are single sex. The Providence College Friars compete primarily in the Big East Conference of NCAA Division I.

Providence College encompasses four schools: the School of Arts and Sciences, School of Business, School of Professional Studies and School of Continuing Education. With nearly 50 majors offered, students have a wide range of options when choosing what course of study to pursue. All undergraduates must complete the core curriculum, which is centered on the two-year-long Development of Western Civilization program. Graduate offerings include master's degree programs in business administration, theological studies, education and more. Providence College shares its motto withHarvard: Veritas, which means "truth" in Latin.

Villanova University

Villanova University is a private institution that was founded in 1842. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 7,042, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 260 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Villanova University's ranking in the 2015 edition of Best Colleges is Regional Universities (North), 1. Its tuition and fees are $45,966 (2014-15).

Villanova University, named for the Spanish Augustinian St. Thomas of Villanova, is still affiliated with the Augustinian Order. Located just 12 miles from Philadelphia in the suburb of Radnor Township, Pennsylvania, Villanova – often shortened to 'Nova – offers popular student organizations like the Blue Key Society, which gives admissions tours and hosts prospective student days, and Rays of Sunshine, the student community service office. A thriving Greek community at Villanova encompasses about two dozen fraternities and sororities. Athletics are also important, and the Villanova Wildcats – known for their successful men's basketball program – mainly compete in the NCAA Division I Big East Conference. Incoming freshmen are guaranteed housing for their first three years in any of the 18 residence halls or eight apartment-style buildings.

Four of Villanova's five schools serve undergraduate and graduate students, and graduate programs include those in the Villanova School of Business and School of Law. Undergraduates can enter the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Villanova School of Business, College of Engineering or College of Nursing. Perhaps due to their use as military hospitals during the Civil War and World War I, university myth has it that two on-campus buildings, Alumni Hall and Picotte Hall at Dundale, are haunted. Villanova is also home to the famous Liberty Bell's twin, known as the "Sister Bell."

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. Researchers worked on computers, radar, and inertial guidance during World War II and the Cold War. Post-war defense research contributed to the rapid expansion of the faculty and campus under James Killian. The current 168-acre (68.0 ha) campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 mile (1.6 km) along the northern bank of the Charles River basin.

MIT, with five schools and one college which contain a total of 32 departments, is traditionally known for its research and education in the physical sciences and engineering, and more recently in biology, economics, linguistics, and management as well. The "Engineers" sponsor 31 sports, most teams of which compete in the NCAA Division III's New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference; the Division I rowing programs compete as part of the EARC and EAWRC.

MIT is often cited as among the world's top universities. As of 2014, 81 Nobel laureates, 52 National Medal of Science recipients, 45 Rhodes Scholars, 38 MacArthur Fellows, 34 astronauts, and 2 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT. The school has a strong entrepreneurial culture, and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the eleventh-largest economy in the world

Stanford University

Stanford University (officially Leland Stanford Junior University) is a private research university in Stanford, California, and one of the world's most prestigious institutions,with the top position in numerous rankings and measures in the United States.

Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford, former Governor of and U.S. Senator from California and leading railroad tycoon, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was opened on October 1, 1891 as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Tuition was free until 1920. The university struggled financially after Leland Stanford's 1893 death and after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley. By 1970, Stanford was home to a linear accelerator, and was one of the original four ARPANET nodes (precursor to the Internet).

Stanford is located in northern Silicon Valley near Palo Alto, California. The university's academic departments are organized into seven schools, with several other holdings, such as laboratories and nature reserves, located outside the main campus. Its 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) campus is one of the largest in the United States. The university is also one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.

Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pacific-12 Conference. It has gained 107 NCAA team championships, the second-most for a university, 465 individual championships, the most in Division I,and has won the NACDA Directors' Cup, recognizing the university with the best overall athletic team achievement, every year since 1994-1995.

Stanford faculty and alumni have founded many companies including Google, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, Sun Microsystems, Instagram and Yahoo!, and companies founded by Stanford alumni generate more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, equivalent to the 10th-largest economy in the world. Fifty-nine Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the University,[30] and it is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires and 17 astronauts. Stanford has produced a total of 18 Turing Award laureates. It is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress.

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as Berkeley, UC Berkeley, California or simply Cal)[8] is a public research university located in Berkeley, California. It is the flagship campus of the University of California system, one of three parts in the state's public higher education plan, which also includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges System.

It is considered by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings as one of six university brands that lead in world reputation rankings in 2015[9] and is ranked third on the U.S. News' 2015 Best Global Universities rankings conducted in the U.S. and nearly 50 other countries.The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) also ranks the University of California, Berkeley, fourth in the world overall, and first among public universities. Some department specifics include third in engineering, fourth in social sciences and first in mathematics, physics, and life sciences.The university is also well known for producing a high number of entrepreneurs.

Established in 1868 as the result of the merger of the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in Oakland, UC Berkeley is the oldest institution in the UC system and offers approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The University of California has been charged with providing both "classical" and "practical" education for the state's people.Cal co-manages three United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Berkeley faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 72 Nobel Prizes (including 30 alumni Nobel laureates), nine Wolf Prizes, seven Fields Medals, 18 Turing Awards, 45 MacArthur Fellowships, 20 Academy Awards, and 11 Pulitzer Prizes. To date, UC Berkeley scientists have discovered six chemical elements of the periodic table (californium, seaborgium, berkelium, einsteinium, fermium, lawrencium). Along with Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley researchers have discovered 16 chemical elements in total – more than any other university in the world.Berkeley is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and continues to have very high research activity with $730.7 million in research and development expenditures in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014.Berkeley physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb in the world, which he personally headquartered at Los Alamos, New Mexico, during World War II. Faculty member Edward Teller was (together with Stanislaw Ulam) the "father of the hydrogen bomb". Former United States Secretary of Energy and Nobel laureate Steven Chu (PhD 1976), was Director of Berkeley Lab, 2004–2009.

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established in 1636. Its history, influence and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Established originally by the Massachusetts legislature and soon thereafter named for John Harvard (its first benefactor), Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning,[13] and the Harvard Corporation (formally, the President and Fellows of Harvard College) is its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites.Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College.

The University is organized into eleven separate academic units—ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area: its 209-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Boston; the business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are in the Longwood Medical Area.Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $32.3 billion as of June 2013.

Harvard is a large, highly residential research university.The nominal cost of attendance is high, but the University's large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages.It operates several arts, cultural, and scientific museums, alongside the Harvard Library, which is the world's largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries with over 18 million volumes.Harvard's alumni include eight U.S. presidents, several foreign heads of state, sixty-two living billionaires and 335 Rhodes Scholars. To date, some 150 Nobel laureates have been affiliated as students, faculty, or staff.

California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology or Caltech is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Although founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the college attracted influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes, and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910, and the college assumed its present name in 1921. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities, and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Kármán.The university is one among a small group of Institutes of Technology in the United States which tends to be primarily devoted to the instruction of technical arts and applied sciences.

Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering, managing $332 million in 2011 in sponsored research.Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. First year students are required to live on campus, and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus house system. Although Caltech has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks,student life is governed by an honor code which allows faculty to assign take-home examinations. The Caltech Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III's Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Caltech is frequently cited as one of the world's best universities. Despite its small size, 33 Caltech alumni and faculty have won a total of 34 Nobel Prizes (Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared prizes) and 71 have won the United States National Medal of Science or Technology.There are 112 faculty members who have been elected to the National Academies. In addition, numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as NASA.