"Harvard University is a personal Ivy League study college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with regarding 6,800 undergraduate students and about 14,000 postgraduate pupils. Established in 1636 as well as called for its initial benefactor, clergyman John Harvard, Harvard is the United States' earliest establishment of higher knowing and also one of one of the most prominent in the world.

The Massachusetts Great as well as General Court authorized Harvard's founding. In its very early years, Harvard College largely trained Congregational as well as Unitarian clergy, although it has never been formally affiliated with any type of religion. Its curriculum as well as pupil body were progressively secularized throughout the 18th century, and also by the 19th century, Harvard had actually become the central cultural facility among Boston elites. [9] [10] Adhering To the American Civil Battle, Head Of State Charles W. Eliot's long tenure (1869-- 1909) changed the university as well as associated professional institutions right into a contemporary research university; Harvard was a starting participant of the Association of American Universities in 1900. A. Lawrence Lowell, who succeeded Eliot, additional reformed the undergraduate educational program and also carried out hostile growth of Harvard's land holdings and physical campus. James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Anxiety as well as World War II; he started to liberalize admissions after the war.

The university is made up of eleven principal scholastic devices-- ten faculties as well as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Research-- with campuses throughout Greater Boston: its 209-acre (85 ha) initial undergraduate campus is centered on Harvard Lawn in Cambridge, 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Boston; the business school and lots of athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are across the Charles River in the Allston community of Boston; and also the medical, oral, as well as public health schools are in Boston's Longwood Medical Area. Harvard's endowment is valued at $40.9 billion, making it the largest of any kind of scholastic organization. While the nominal cost of attendance is high, the college's endowment permits it to provide generous, no-loan financial assistance plans as well as use need-blind admission. The Harvard Library is the globe's biggest scholastic library system, consisting of 79 private libraries holding regarding 20.4 million products.

Harvard's alumni consist of 8 U.S. presidents, greater than 30 international heads of state, 188 living billionaires, 369 Rhodes Scholars, and also 252 Marshall Scholars. Since March 2020, 160 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medalists, as well as 14 Turing Award champions have been associated as pupils, faculty, or researchers. In addition, Harvard students and graduates have actually won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, and also 108 Olympic medals (46 gold, 41 silver, as well as 21 bronze), and established numerous noteworthy business worldwide."