Northwestern University

Overview

Northwestern University

Northwestern University (NU) is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, NU seeks to teach with excellence and promotes a strong interdisciplinary culture. It is recognized as one of the leading universities offering graduate programs in the fields of engineering, education, law, business, and economics in the United States and in the world. Likewise, NU is a consistently top-ranked university both locally and internationally.

Northwestern University Key Statistics

The university has 12 colleges and schools. It offers 124 undergraduate degree programs as well as 145 postgraduate and Ph.D. degree programs. Some of these major academic units include the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, School of Communication, School of Education and Social Policy, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications Pritzker.

The university has more than 21,940 students, composed of more than 13,000 postgraduates and around 8,000 undergraduates. About 19% of the student population are foreign students from across different countries. It houses around 3,781 faculty staff with a student-faculty ratio of 1:6.

Other Northwestern University key statistics include its full-service libraries that hold more than 4.9 million volumes of books, over 4.6 million microforms and a collection of more than 99,000 periodicals. It also has access to over 1.2 million volumes of electronic books and journals.

Northwestern University Research

The institution is the leading research university in the country. It has a very high research activity and output, enabling it to earn an R1 university classification. It has patented 247 inventions and filed 270 patent applications. Likewise, NU is recognized for developing new drugs. It has an annual research funding of about $887.3 million.

The university’s top three research fields are medicine, internal medicine, and materials science. Its researchers have been published in publications like The New England Journal of Medicine, Social Science Research Network, and JAMA. Northwestern University research teams get invited to attend/present papers at prestigious conferences like Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and Human Factors in Computing Systems.

The most cited research publication of Northwestern University is Fornell and Larcker’s (1981) “Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error,” published in the Journal of Marketing Research. This scholarly output has so far received a total of 76,187 citations.

The second most cited scholarly output is Kotler and Gertner’s (2002) “Country as brand, product, and beyond: A place marketing and brand management perspective.” It is published in the Journal of Brand Management. A total of 68,587 articles, books, and other publications have cited this scholarly output.

The third most cited publication from Northwestern University is Anderson and Gerbing’s (1988) “Structural equation modeling in practice: A review and recommended two-step approach,” published in Psychological Bulletin. It has generated a total of 44,058 citations to date.

NU also has more than 50 university research institutes and centers, and over 90 school- and unit-based institutes and centers. Some of these research institutes and centers include the Center for Advanced Materials for Energy and Environment, the Center for Nanotechnology Excellence, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.

You can also learn more about the educational performance of Northwestern University in our ranking of US universities & colleges.