Duke University

Duke University is a private institution that was founded in 1838. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 6,680, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 8,709 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. Duke University's ranking in the 2013 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 8. Its tuition and fees are $43,623 (2012-13).

Durham, N.C., which surrounds Duke’s campus, offers a variety of activities including shopping, dining, and entertainment. Its "Bull City" nickname comes from the Blackwell Tobacco Company’s Bull Durham Tobacco. Students at Duke are required to live on campus for their first three years, and freshmen live together on the East Campus. 

Duke University is divided into 10 schools and colleges, many of which serve both undergraduate and graduate students. Its graduate programs include the highly ranked Fuqua School of Business, Pratt School of Engineering, School of Law, School of Medicine, Sanford School of Public Policy, and School of Nursing. Duke also offers graduate programs through its well-respected Divinity School and Nicholas 

When applying to Duke University, it's important to note the application deadline is January 2, and the early decision deadline is November 1. Scores for either the ACT or SAT test are due January 2. The application fee at Duke University is $75. It is most selective, with an acceptance rate of 14.0 percent.

The student-faculty ratio at Duke University is 7:1, and the school has 71.6 percent of its classes with fewer than 20 students. The most popular majors at Duke University include: Biology, General; Psychology, General; Economics; Political Science and Government; and Public Policy Analysis. The average freshman retention rate, an indicator of student satisfaction, is 97.0 percent.

Duke University offers a number of student services including women's center, placement service, health service, and health insurance. Duke University also offers campus safety and security services like 24-hour foot and vehicle patrols, late night transport/escort service, 24-hour emergency telephones, lighted pathways/sidewalks, student patrols, and controlled dormitory access (key, security card, etc). Alcohol is permitted for students of legal age at Duke University.

At Duke University, 45.1 percent of full-time undergraduates receive some kind of need-based financial aid and the average need-based scholarship or grant award is $36,877.

University of Chicago

University of Chicago is a private institution that was founded in 1892. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 5,388, its setting is urban, and the campus size is 215 acres. It utilizes a quarter-based academic calendar. University of Chicago's ranking in the 2013 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 4. Its tuition and fees are $44,574 (2012-13).

The University of Chicago, situated in Chicago’s Hyde Park community, offers a rich campus life in a big-city setting. The Chicago Maroons have more than 15 NCAA Division III teams, the majority of which compete in the University Athletic Association, and have strong basketball and wrestling programs. At Chicago, freshmen are required to live on campus, and about 60 percent of students choose to remain on campus, while others live in off-campus apartments and houses. On-campus students are placed in "houses" within their dorm, which serve as tight-knit communities and provide academic and social support. Chicago offers more than 400 student organizations, and about 10 percent of students join the small but active Greek life community.

The University of Chicago is comprised of the College and a number of graduate and professional schools. Its postgraduate offerings include the highly ranked Booth School of Business, Law School, Pritzker School of Medicine, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, and Department of Geophysical Sciences, as well as a top-ranked graduate program in economics and a well-regarded Divinity School. Since 1987, the school has hosted the four-day long "University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt," now a venerable university tradition. Famous alumni include former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics recipient Milton Friedman, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and author Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

University of Chicago offers a number of student services including nonremedial tutoring, health service, and health insurance. University of Chicago also offers campus safety and security services like 24-hour foot and vehicle patrols, late night transport/escort service, 24-hour emergency telephones, lighted pathways/sidewalks, and controlled dormitory access (key, security card, etc). Alcohol is permitted for students of legal age at University of Chicago.

University of Chicago has a total undergraduate enrollment of 5,388, with a gender distribution of 51.7 percent male students and 48.3 percent female students. At this school, 60.0 percent of the students live in college-owned, -operated, or -affiliated housing and 40.0 percent of students live off campus. University of Chicago is part of the NCAA III athletic conference.

The student-faculty ratio at University of Chicago is 6:1, and the school has 75.1 percent of its classes with fewer than 20 students. The most popular majors at University of Chicago include: Social Sciences; Biological and Biomedical Sciences; Mathematics and Statistics; Physical Sciences; and Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics. The average freshman retention rate, an indicator of student satisfaction, is 98.2 percent.

Massachusetts University

UMass Amherst was born in 1863 as a land-grant agricultural college set on 310 rural acres with four faculty members, four wooden buildings, 56 students and a curriculum combining modern farming, science, technical courses, and liberal arts.

Over time, the curriculum, facilities, and student body outgrew the institution’s original mission. In 1892 the first female student enrolled and graduate degrees were authorized. By 1931, to reflect a broader curriculum, “Mass Aggie” had become Massachusetts State College. In 1947, “Mass State” became the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Immediately after World War II, the university experienced rapid growth in facilities, programs and enrollment, with 4000 students in 1954. By 1964, undergraduate enrollment jumped to 10,500, as Baby Boomers came of age. The turbulent political environment also brought a “sit-in” to the newly constructed Whitmore Administration Building. By the end of the decade, the completion of Southwest Residential Complex, the Alumni Stadium and the establishment of many new academic departments gave UMass Amherst much of its modern stature.

In the 1970s continued growth gave rise to a shuttle bus service on campus as well as several important architectural additions: the Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center, with a hotel, office space, fine dining restaurant, campus store and passageway to a multi-level parking garage; the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, named “tallest library in the world” upon its completion in 1973; and the Fine Arts Center, with performance space for world-class music, dance and theater.

The next two decades saw the emergence of UMass Amherst as a major research facility with the construction of the Lederle Graduate Research Center and the Conte National Polymer Research Center. Other programs excelled as well. In 1996 UMass Basketball became Atlantic 10 Conference champs and went to the NCAA Final Four. Before the millennium, both the William D. Mullins Center, a multi-purpose sports and convocation facility, and the Paul Robsham Visitors Center bustled with activity, welcoming thousands of visitors to the campus each year.

UMass Amherst entered the 21st century as the flagship campus of the state’s five-campus University system, and enrollment of nearly 24,000 students and a national and international reputation for excellence.

Brandeis University

Brandeis University was founded in 1948 and has continued to rank near the top of academic life in the United States. In 1985 Brandeis was elected to membership in the Association of American Universities, an elite organization of the nation's 59 research universities. Controlling for size and judged according to faculty publications and citations, Brandeis was ranked ninth in 1997 among research universities. Over 3,000 undergraduates were enrolled at the beginning of the 21^st century, plus another 1,300 graduate students. As of 2004, the campus consisted of 96 buildings, located on 235 suburban acres nine miles west of Boston. Brandeis University is especially renowned for its programs in the physical and natural sciences, in history, and in Jewish studies.

Its founding president, Abram L. *Sachar, was a scholar of Jewish history; in 1968 he retired after two decades, and became chancellor and then chancellor emeritus. (He died in 1993, at the age of 94.) Sachar's successor was an attorney, Morris B. Abram, who had served as president of the American Jewish Committee. Amid considerable political turmoil on campus, he remained as president for only two years, and was briefly replaced by Charles Schottland, the former commissioner of the Social Security Administration and the founding dean of the Florence Heller Graduate School for Social Policy and Management (established at Brandeis in 1959). By 1972, when Schottland resigned in favor of Marver H. Bernstein, the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Research Center was completed, as was the Feldberg Computer Center.

At the dawn of the 21^st century, the university's endowment was about $400 million; and over 300 full-time professors and instructors served on the faculty, providing an official student-faculty ratio of 9:1. The teaching staff belonged to 24 autonomous departments and 22 interdisciplinary programs, offering three dozen majors. Degrees in nearly two dozen disciplines were also offered in the graduate programs. Probably the most famous faculty member was Morris Schwartz, the subject of a memoir by his former student, Mitch Albom, 1979, entitled Tuesdays with Morrie (1997), which ranked first on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list for four straight years. MacArthur Foundation Fellowships (or "genius" grants) were bestowed on three faculty members: Bernadette Brooten of the Lown School of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, a specialist in the social history of early Christianity; historian Jacqueline Jones, whose expertise combines the history of American women, labor, and African-Americans; and biologist Gina Turrigiano, who works on activity-dependent regulation of neuronal properties. Washington's Crossing (2004), by David Hackett Fischer of the Department of History, was also a finalist for the National Book Award. The faculty in the early decades of the university had been heavily stocked with Jewish refugees, some of whom had academically unconventional careers or even limited formal education. The origins of the faculty in later decades were far more likely to resemble the pattern of other elite institutions. The shift to native-born scholars was evident in Jewish studies. Brandeis was the first secular university in North America to create such a department; and its faculty has been especially distinguished, including Bible scholars Nahum *Sarna and Michael *Fishbane, sociologist Marshall *Sklare, historians Ben *Halpern andJonathan D. *Sarna, and such scholars of Judaic thought as Nahum *Glatzer, Alexander *Altmann, Marvin *Fox, and Arthur *Green.

Because the university is neither a religious seminary nor a sectarian institution, the Jewishness of its origins and character has instigated a considerable effort to negotiate and define; and press accounts timed to honor both the 40^th and 50^th anniversaries of the founding of the institution referred to an "identity crisis" from which Brandeis University was reportedly suffering. That dilemma has persisted. Beginning in the 1970s and gathering momentum in succeeding decades, Brandeis has been sensitive to the celebration of diversity as a desideratum in public life and especially on the nation's campuses. About 16% of the student body is classified as "minority"; 101 foreign countries are also represented among the undergraduates and graduate students. The effort to ensure that both the student body and the personnel of the faculty and administration would reflect the ethos of multiculturalism was bound to generate some friction with a yearning to keep intact the heritage of Jewish distinctiveness, with the continuing effort of both undergraduates and institutional leaders to articulate the meaning of the Jewish legacy of Brandeis University, and with imperatives of its Jewish communal sponsorship and auspices.