"Harvard College is a private Ivy Organization research study university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with about 6,800 undergraduate students and concerning 14,000 postgraduate trainees. Developed in 1636 as well as named for its very first benefactor, clergyman John Harvard, Harvard is the United States' earliest establishment of higher understanding as well as among one of the most distinguished worldwide.

The Massachusetts Great and General Court licensed Harvard's starting. In its early years, Harvard University mainly educated Congregational and also Unitarian clergy, although it has actually never been formally associated with any religion. Its educational program and trainee body were progressively secularized during the 18th century, and also by the 19th century, Harvard had emerged as the main social facility among Boston elites. [9] [10] Complying With the American Civil Battle, President Charles W. Eliot's long period (1869-- 1909) transformed the university as well as affiliated expert schools right into a modern-day research university; Harvard was an establishing member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. A. Lawrence Lowell, who was successful Eliot, more changed the undergraduate educational program and also undertook hostile expansion of Harvard's land holdings as well as physical school. James Bryant Conant led the university via the Great Clinical Depression and also The Second World War; he started to liberalize admissions after the war.

The university is made up of eleven principal academic systems-- ten professors and also the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study-- with campuses throughout Greater Boston: its 209-acre (85 ha) initial undergraduate campus is fixated Harvard Yard in Cambridge, 3 miles (5 kilometres) northwest of Boston; business school and many athletics facilities, consisting of Harvard Stadium, are throughout the Charles River in the Allston community of Boston; and also the clinical, oral, and also public health schools are in Boston's Longwood Medical Area. Harvard's endowment is valued at $40.9 billion, making it the biggest of any kind of academic organization. While the small expense of attendance is high, the college's endowment allows it to provide generous, no-loan financial assistance packages and also make use of need-blind admission. The Harvard Library is the world's largest scholastic collection system, comprising 79 individual libraries holding about 20.4 million things.

Harvard's alumni consist of 8 U.S. presidents, greater than 30 international presidents, 188 living billionaires, 369 Rhodes Scholars, and also 252 Marshall Scholars. Since March 2020, 160 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medalists, and 14 Turing Award winners have been connected as trainees, faculty, or researchers. On top of that, Harvard students as well as alumni have actually won 10 Academy Honors, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, as well as 108 Olympic medals (46 gold, 41 silver, and also 21 bronze), as well as founded numerous notable business worldwide."