University of Chicago

Not to be confused with University of Illinois Chicago.

University of Chicago

Motto	Crescat scientia; vita excolatur (Latin)
Motto in English	"Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched"
Type	Private research university
Established	1890 (1890)
Founder	John D. Rockefeller
Accreditation	HLC
Academic affiliations	AAU NAICU URA
Endowment	$10.1 billion (2024)
President	Paul Alivisatos
Academic staff	3,418 (2023)
Administrative staff	23,217 (2023)
Students	19,287 (2024)
Undergraduates	7,569 (2024)
Postgraduates	10,968 (2024)
Other students	750 (non-degree seeking, 2024)
Location	Chicago , Illinois , United States 41°47′23″N 87°35′59″W
Campus	Large city, 217 acres (87.8 ha) (main campus)
Other campuses	Beijing Delhi Hong Kong London Luxor Paris
Newspaper	The Chicago Maroon
Colors	Maroon
Nickname	Maroons
Sporting affiliations	NCAA Division III – UAA MWC
Mascot	Phil the Phoenix
Website	uchicago.edu

The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UofC) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, near the shore of Lake Michigan about 7 miles (11 km) from the Loop.

The university is composed of an undergraduate college and four graduate divisions: Biological Science, Arts & Humanities, Physical Science, and Social Science, which include various organized departments and institutes. In addition, the university operates eight professional schools in the fields of business, social work, divinity, continuing studies, public policy, law, medicine, and molecular engineering. The university maintains satellite campuses and centers in London, Hong Kong, Paris, Beijing, Delhi, and Luxor, and downtown Chicago.

University of Chicago scholars have played a role in the development of many academic disciplines, including economics, law, literary criticism, mathematics, physics, religion, sociology, and political science, establishing the Chicago schools of thought in various fields. Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory produced the world's first human-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction in Chicago Pile-1 beneath the viewing stands of the university's Stagg Field. Advances in chemistry led to the "radiocarbon revolution" in the carbon-14 dating of ancient life and objects. The university research efforts include administration of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, as well as the Marine Biological Laboratory. The university is also home to the University of Chicago Press, the largest university press in the United States.

As of 2025, the university's students, faculty, and staff has included 101 Nobel laureates. The university's faculty members and alumni also include 10 Fields Medalists, 4 Turing Award winners, 58 MacArthur Fellows, 30 Marshall Scholars, 55 Rhodes Scholars, 27 Pulitzer Prize winners, 20 National Humanities Medalists, and 8 Olympic medalists.

History

Main article: History of the University of Chicago

Old University of Chicago

Further information: Old University of Chicago

Albert A. Michelson, Professor of Physics and first American Nobel laureate, delivers the second Convocation Address in front of Goodspeed and Gates-Blake Halls, with President William Rainey Harper, professors, and trustees in attendance, July 1, 1894.

The first University of Chicago was founded by a small group of Baptist educators in 1856 through a land endowment from Senator Stephen A. Douglas. It closed in 1886 after years of financial struggle and a final annus horribilis in which the campus was badly damaged by fire and the school was foreclosed on by its creditors. Several years later, its trustees elected to change the school's name to the "Old University of Chicago" so that a new school could go by the name of the city.

Early years

In 1890, the American Baptist Education Society incorporated a new University of Chicago as a coeducational institution, using $400,000 donated to the ABES to supplement a $600,000 donation from Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller, and land donated by Marshall Field. While the Rockefeller donation provided money for academic operations and long-term endowment, it was stipulated that such money could not be used for buildings. The Hyde Park campus’ construction was financed by donations from wealthy Chicagoans such as Silas B. Cobb, who provided the funds for the campus's first building, Cobb Lecture Hall, and matched Marshall Field's pledge of $100,000. Other early benefactors included businessmen Charles L. Hutchinson (trustee, treasurer and donor of Hutchinson Commons), Martin A. Ryerson (president of the board of trustees and donor of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory) Adolphus Clay Bartlett and Leon Mandel, who funded the construction of the gymnasium and assembly hall, and George C. Walker of the Walker Museum, a relative of Cobb who encouraged his inaugural donation for facilities.

The new university acknowledged its predecessor. The university's coat of arms has a phoenix rising from the ashes, a reference to the fire and foreclosure of the Old University of Chicago. A single stone from the rubble of the original Douglas Hall on 34th Place was set into the wall of the Classics Building. The dean of the college and University of Chicago and professor of history John Boyer has argued that the University of Chicago has "a plausible genealogy as a pre–Civil War institution". Alumni from the Old University of Chicago are recognized as alumni of the University of Chicago.

William Rainey Harper became the university's president on July 1, 1891, and the Hyde Park campus opened for classes on October 1, 1892. Harper worked on building up the faculty and in two years had a faculty of 120, including eight former university or college presidents. Harper was a Semiticist and a member of the Baptist clergy who believed that a great university should maintain the study of faith as a central focus. To fulfill this commitment, he brought the Baptist seminary that had begun as an independent school "alongside" the Old University of Chicago and separated from the old school decades earlier to Morgan Park. This became the Divinity School in 1891, the first professional school at the University of Chicago.

In 1892, Harper recruited Yale baseball and football player Amos Alonzo Stagg from the Young Men's Christian Association training school at Springfield to coach the school's football program. Stagg was given the position of associate professor in physical education, becoming the first football coach and athletic director in the university's history. While coaching at the university, Stagg invented the numbered football jersey and the huddle. Stagg is the namesake of the university's Stagg Field.

In 1894, the university adopted maroon as its official color after initially selecting goldenrod. The Maroons became the university's nickname during the same year.

The business school was founded in 1898, and the law school was founded in 1902. Harper died in 1906 and was replaced by a succession of three presidents whose tenures lasted until 1929. During this period, the Oriental Institute was founded to support and interpret archeological work in what was then called the Near East.

In the 1890s, the university affiliated with several regional colleges and universities. Among other things, the schools were required to have courses of study comparable to those at the university and to make no faculty appointment without the university's approval. For their part, the university agreed to provide affiliated schools with books and equipment at cost, as well as instructors without cost except for travel expenses. The agreement provided that either party could terminate the affiliation on proper notice. Several university professors disliked the program, as it involved uncompensated additional labor on their part, and they believed it cheapened the academic reputation of the university. The program was ended by 1910.

In 1900, the university co-founded the Association of American Universities with thirteen other universities, including Harvard, Columbia, and John Hopkins.

In 1911, the university adopted a Latin motto of Crescat scientia; vita excolatur, which translates to "Let knowledge grow from more and more; and so be human life enriched."

1920s–1980s

Some of the University of Chicago team that worked on the production of the world's first human-caused self-sustaining nuclear reaction, including Enrico Fermi in the front row and Leó Szilárd in the second

In 1929, the university's fifth president, 30-year-old legal philosophy scholar Robert Maynard Hutchins, took office. The university underwent many changes during his 24-year tenure. Hutchins reformed the undergraduate college's curriculum into a liberal-arts curriculum, which survives today in the form of a Common Core. He also organized the university's graduate work into four divisions, and eliminated varsity football from the university in an attempt to emphasize academics over athletics. During his term, the University of Chicago Hospitals (now called the University of Chicago Medical Center) finished construction and enrolled their first medical students. Furthermore, the philosophy oriented Committee on Social Thought was created.

Money that had been raised during the 1920s and financial backing from the Rockefeller Foundation helped the school to survive through the Great Depression. In 1933, Hutchins proposed a plan to merge the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, though it was ultimately abandoned. During World War II, the university's Metallurgical Laboratory contributed to the Manhattan Project. The university was the site of the first isolation of plutonium and of the creation of the first artificial, self-sustained nuclear reaction by Enrico Fermi in 1942.

In the early 1950s, student applications declined as a result of increasing crime and poverty in the Hyde Park neighborhood. In response, the university became a major sponsor of an urban renewal project for Hyde Park, which called for the clearing of 101 acres of land. Of the buildings proposed for demolition, 78% were substandard. During this period the university, and later the affiliated Shimer College, adopted an early entrant program that allowed students with two years of high school education to attend college.

Front page of Chicago Maroon breaking the news of the university's segregationist off-campus rental policies

The university experienced its share of student unrest during the 1960s, beginning in 1962 when then-freshman Bernie Sanders helped lead a 15-day sit-in at the college's administration building in a protest over the university's segregationist off-campus rental policies. After continued turmoil, a university committee in 1967 issued what became known as the Kalven Report. The report, a two-page statement of the university's policy in "social and political action," declared that "To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures." The report has since been used to justify decisions such as the university's refusal to divest from South Africa in the 1980s and Darfur in the late 2000s.

In 1969, after the sociology department unanimously declined to rehire assistant professor Marlene Dixon (an open Marxist), over 400 students occupied the Administration Building for two weeks to protest the perceived politically motivated decision. After the sit-in ended when Dixon turned down a one-year reappointment, 42 students were expelled and 81 were suspended, the most severe response to student occupations of any American university during the student movement.

In 1978, history scholar Hanna Holborn Gray, then the provost and acting president of Yale University, became president of the University of Chicago, a position she held for 15 years. She was the first woman in the United States to hold the presidency of a major university.

In 1989, the Graduate Library School was closed.

1990s–2020s

View from the Midway Plaisance

In 1999, President Hugo Sonnenschein announced plans to relax the university's core curriculum, reducing the number of required courses from 21 to 15. When The New York Times, The Economist, and other news outlets picked up this story, the university became the focal point of a national debate on education. The changes were ultimately implemented, but the controversy played a role in Sonnenschein's decision to resign in 2000.

From the mid-2000s, the university began a number of multi-million dollar expansion projects. In 2008, the University of Chicago announced the establishment of the Milton Friedman Institute, which attracted both support and controversy from faculty members and students. The institute was later merged with the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory to form the new Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. In 2008, investor David G. Booth donated $300 million to the university's Booth School of Business, which is the largest gift in the university's history and the largest gift ever to any business school. In 2009, planning or construction on several new buildings, half of which cost $100 million or more, was underway. Since 2011, major construction projects have included the Jules and Gwen Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery, a ten-story medical research center, and further additions to the medical campus of the University of Chicago Medical Center. In 2014, the university launched the public phase of a $4.5 billion fundraising campaign. In September 2015, the university received $100 million from The Pearson Family Foundation to establish The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts and The Pearson Global Forum at the Harris School of Public Policy.

In 2019, the university created its first school in three decades, the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.

On April 29, 2024, students at the University of Chicago set up an encampment on the university's main quad as a part of the nationwide movement in support of Palestine at institutions of higher learning across the country. The encampment was cleared by the University of Chicago Police Department on May 7.

Campus

Main campus

The campus of the University of Chicago, from the top of Rockefeller Chapel. The Main Quadrangles can be seen on the left (west), the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa and the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics can be seen in the center (north) and the Booth School of Business and Laboratory Schools can be seen on the right (east), as the panoramic is bounded on both sides by the Midway Plaisance (south).

The main campus of the University of Chicago consists of 217 acres (87.8 ha) in the Chicago neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Woodlawn, approximately eight miles (13 km) south of downtown Chicago. The northern and southern portions of campus are separated by the Midway Plaisance, a large, linear park created for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. In 2011, Travel+Leisure listed the university as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the United States.

Aerial shots from the University of Chicago campus

View of university building from the Harper Quadrangle

The first buildings of the campus, which make up what is now known as the Main Quadrangles, were part of a master plan conceived by two University of Chicago trustees and plotted by Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb. The Main Quadrangles consist of six quadrangles, each surrounded by buildings, bordering one larger quadrangle. The buildings of the Main Quadrangles were designed by Cobb, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, Holabird & Roche, and other architectural firms in a mixture of the Victorian Gothic and Collegiate Gothic styles, patterned on the colleges of the University of Oxford. (Mitchell Tower, for example, is modeled after Oxford's Magdalen Tower, and the university Commons, Hutchinson Hall, replicates Christ Church Hall.) In celebration of the 2018 Illinois Bicentennial, the University of Chicago Quadrangles were selected as one of the Illinois 200 Great Places by the American Institute of Architects Illinois component.

Many older buildings of the University of Chicago employ Collegiate Gothic architecture like that of the University of Oxford. For example, Chicago's Mitchell Tower (left) was modeled after Oxford's Magdalen Tower (right).

After the 1940s, the campus's Gothic style began to give way to modern styles. In 1955, Eero Saarinen was contracted to develop a second master plan, which led to the construction of buildings both north and south of the Midway, including the Laird Bell Law Quadrangle (a complex designed by Saarinen); a series of arts buildings; Edith Abbott Hall, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; the Keller Center, which is home of the Harris School of Public Policy and was designed by Edward Durrell Stone; and the Regenstein Library, the largest building on campus, a brutalist structure designed by Walter Netsch. Another master plan, designed in 1999 and updated in 2004, produced the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center (2003), the Max Palevsky Residential Commons (2001), South Campus Residence Hall and dining commons (2009), a new children's hospital, and other construction, expansions, and restorations. In 2011, the university completed the glass dome-shaped Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, which provides a grand reading room for the university library and prevents the need for an off-campus book depository.

The site of Chicago Pile-1 is a National Historic Landmark and is marked by the Henry Moore sculpture Nuclear Energy. Robie House, a Frank Lloyd Wright building acquired by the university in 1963, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well as a National Historic Landmark, as is room 405 of the George Herbert Jones Laboratory, where Glenn T. Seaborg and his team were the first to isolate plutonium. Hitchcock Hall, an undergraduate dormitory, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Adjacent to the campus in Jackson Park is the home of the Obama Presidential Center, the Presidential Library for the 44th president of the United States with expected completion in 2026. The Obamas settled in the university's Hyde Park neighborhood where they raised their children and where Barack Obama began his political career. Michelle Obama served as an administrator at the university and founded the university's Community Service Center.

• Campus of the University of Chicago
• 
  Snell-Hitchcock, an undergraduate dormitory constructed in the early 20th century, is part of the Main Quadrangles.
• 
  Rockefeller Chapel, constructed in 1928, was designed by Bertram Goodhue in the neo-Gothic style.
• 
  The Henry Hinds Laboratory for Geophysical Sciences was built in 1969.
• 
  The Gerald Ratner Athletics Center, opened in 2003 and designed by Cesar Pelli, houses the volleyball, wrestling, swimming, and basketball teams.

Transportation

The Hyde Park campus is served by the CTA Red Line and Green Line, as well as the Metra Electric District Line and the South Shore Line, all of which provide access to downtown Chicago. The campus is also served by a network of CTA bus routes.

The university shuttle program includes day-time and night-time routes, most of which operate within Hyde Park. In 2022, the university added a Downtown Campus Connector to its shuttle program, which connects the main Hyde Park campus to the Gleacher Center and downtown UChicago Medicine clinics.

In 2024, the University introduced a Via ride-sharing program ahead of the 2024-2025 school year, which provides unlimited free rides on campus in shared vans.

Safety

In November 2021, a university graduate was robbed and fatally shot on a sidewalk in a residential area in Hyde Park near campus; a total of three University of Chicago students were killed by gunfire incidents in 2021. These incidents prompted student protests and an open letter to university leadership signed by more than 300 faculty members.

In response, the university introduced measures including increased foot and vehicular patrols near campus, expanded coordination between the university police department and the CPD, and greater use of security cameras and license plate readers. The university continues to maintain one of the largest private police forces in the country.

Satellite campuses

The university also maintains facilities apart from its main campus. The university's Booth School of Business maintains campuses in Hong Kong, London, and downtown Chicago. The Center in Paris, a campus located on the left bank of the Seine in Paris, hosts various undergraduate and graduate study programs. The university also maintains the Chicago House, based in Luxor, which serves as the Egyptian headquarters for the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. In fall 2010, the university opened a center in Beijing, near Renmin University's campus in Haidian District. The most recent additions are a center in New Delhi, India, which opened in 2014, and a center in Hong Kong which opened in 2018. In 2024, the university opened the John W. Boyer Center in Paris, designed by architectural firm Studio Gang and nearly tripling the size of the Center in Paris which had opened in 2003.

Academics

The University of Chicago Main Quadrangles, looking north

The academic bodies of the University of Chicago consist of the college, four divisions of graduate research, seven professional schools, and the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. The university also contains a library system, the University of Chicago Press, and the University of Chicago Medical Center, and oversees several laboratories, including Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Argonne National Laboratory, and the Marine Biological Laboratory. The university is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. It is a member of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Universities Research Association.

The university runs on a quarter system in which the academic year is divided into four terms: Summer (June–August), Autumn (September–December), Winter (January–March), and Spring (April–June). Full-time undergraduate students take three to four courses every quarter for approximately nine weeks before their quarterly academic breaks. The school year typically begins in late September and ends in late May.

Undergraduate college

Main article: College of the University of Chicago

Harper Memorial Library was dedicated in 1912, and its architecture takes inspiration from various colleges in England.

The College of the University of Chicago grants Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in 51 undergraduate courses of study (since 2005 known as majors) and 33 secondary courses of study, now know as minors. The college's academics are divided into four divisions: the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division, the Physical Sciences Collegiate Division, the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, and the Humanities Collegiate Division. Each division is affiliated with the corresponding graduate division of the university.

The college introduced a now-widespread model of the liberal arts undergraduate program which featured the Socratic method in undergraduate contexts, the Great Books program, and the core curriculum. Since the 1999-2000 school year, 15 courses across seven subjects and demonstrated proficiency in a foreign language are required under the core curriculum.

Eckhart Hall houses the university's math department.

Graduate schools and committees

The university graduate schools and committees are divided into four divisions (biological sciences, humanities, physical sciences, and social sciences), and eight professional schools. In the autumn quarter of 2022, the university enrolled 10,546 graduate students on degree-seeking courses: 569 in the biological sciences division, 612 in the humanities division, 2,103 in the physical sciences division, 972 in the social sciences division, and 6,290 in the professional schools (including the Graham School).

The university is home to several committees for interdisciplinary scholarship, including the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought.

Research

Aerial view of Fermilab, a science research laboratory co-managed by the University of Chicago

According to the National Science Foundation, University of Chicago spent $423.9 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 60th in the nation. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". It is a founding member of the Association of American Universities, and was a member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation between 1946 and 2016, when the group's name was changed to the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The University of Chicago is not a member of the rebranded consortium, but continues to be a collaborator.

The university operates more than 140 research centers and institutes on campus. Among these are the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa—a museum and research center for Near Eastern studies owned and operated by the university—and a number of National Resource Centers, including the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Chicago also operates or is affiliated with several research institutions apart from the university proper. The university manages Argonne National Laboratory, part of the United States Department of Energy's national laboratory system, and co-manages Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), a nearby particle physics laboratory. It was also part of the Astrophysical Research Consortium that constructed the Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico. Faculty and students at the adjacent Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago collaborate with the university. In 2013, the university formed an affiliation with the formerly independent Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. The National Opinion Research Center maintains an office at the Hyde Park campus and is affiliated with multiple academic centers and institutes.

University of Chicago building during fall

The University of Chicago has been the site of various experiments and academic movements. The university has played a role in shaping ideas about the free market and is the namesake of the Chicago school of economics, the school of economic thought supported by Milton Friedman and other economists. The university's sociology department was the first independent sociology department in the United States and gave birth to the Chicago school of sociology. The university was the site of the Chicago Pile-1 (the first controlled, self-sustaining human-made nuclear chain reaction, part of the Manhattan Project), of Robert Millikan's oil-drop experiment that calculated the charge of the electron, and of the development of radiocarbon dating by Willard F. Libby in 1946. The chemical experiment that tested how life originated on early Earth, the Miller–Urey experiment, was also conducted at the university. REM sleep was discovered at the university in 1953 by Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky.

The University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics operated the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin from 1897 until 2018, where the largest operating refracting telescope in the world and other telescopes are located.

Professional schools

The university contains eight professional schools.

• The University of Chicago Divinity School was the first professional school at the University of Chicago, chartered in 1865 and incorporated into the university in 1890. It offers four graduate degree programs as well as undergraduate course offerings. It has been accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada since 1938.
• The Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, originally known as the University-Extension program, was established in 1892. The school offers various non-degree courses and certificates as well as degree programs. In 1997, it was renamed to the William B. and Catherine V. Graham School of General Studies in honor of a $10 million donation from William and Catherine Graham made in the same year.
• The Booth School of Business was founded in 1898 as the College of Commerce and Politics and received business school accreditation in 1916. In 2008, the then-called Graduate School of Business was renamed following a $300 million donation from alumnus David Booth. It was ranked fourth out of 133 American business schools by U.S. News in 2025.

• The University of Chicago Law School was established in 1902, twelve years after the founding of the university. It has been accredited by the American Bar Association since 1923 and was ranked third out of 195 American law schools by U.S. News in 2025.
• The Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice was first established in 1908 as the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and received its first dean, Edith Abbott (who became the first female dean of any graduate school in the United States), in 1924. It was renamed in 2021 in recognition of a $75 million donation from James and Paula Crown and the Crown family.
• The Pritzker School of Medicine matriculated its first class of medical students in 1927 and was renamed to the Pritzker School of Medicine in 1968 in recognition of support from the Pritzker family. It has been accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education since 1942. In 2023, the school declined to continue submitting data to U.S. News to help the publication rank the institution, joining medical schools including those at Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia in doing so.
• The Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy was established in 1988 as the Graduate School of Public Policy Studies. In 1990, it was renamed in recognition of Irving Harris' financial support of the program during its inception. The school offers six graduate degree programs as well as joint degree and non-degree programs.
• The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering was founded in 2019 following an expansion of the Institute of Molecular Engineering, which was established in 2011. The Pritzker Foundation provided a $75 million donation to help establish the school, which occupies the William Eckhardt Research Center.

Associated academic institutions

The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a private day school run by the university

The university runs a number of academic institutions and programs apart from its undergraduate and postgraduate schools. It operates the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (a private day school for K-12 students and day care), and a public charter school with three campuses on the South Side of Chicago administered by the university's Urban Education Institute. In addition, the Hyde Park Day School, a school for students with learning disabilities, and the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a residential treatment program for those with behavioral and emotional problems, maintains a location on the University of Chicago campus. Since 1983, the University of Chicago has maintained the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, a mathematics program used in urban primary and secondary schools. The university runs a program called the Council on Advanced Studies, which administers interdisciplinary workshops to provide a forum for graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present scholarly work in progress. The university also operates the University of Chicago Press, the largest university press in North America.

Library system

University of Chicago, Harper Library

The University of Chicago Library system encompasses six libraries that contain a total of 11 million volumes, the 9th most among library systems in the United States. The university's primary library is the Regenstein Library, which contains over 4.5 million print volumes on a variety of subjects and is the largest on campus. The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, built in 2011, houses a large study space and an automated book storage and retrieval system. The John Crerar Library contains more than 1.4 million volumes in the biological, medical and physical sciences and collections in general science and the philosophy and history of science, medicine, and technology. The university also operates a number of special libraries, including the D'Angelo Law Library, the Social Service Administration Library, and the Eckhart Library for mathematics and computer science. Harper Memorial Library, the first library of the university, is now a reading and study room.

Arts

Saieh Hall for Economics, houses the Department of Economics and the Becker Friedman Institute.

The University of Chicago Arts program joins academic departments in the Division of the Humanities and the college, student art programs, and professional organizations including the Court Theatre, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, the Smart Museum of Art, and the Renaissance Society. The university has an artist-in-residence program, which has supported over 32 individual artists as of May 2025. The university offers graduate degrees in music, cinema and media studies, visual arts, and the humanities, among other subjects. It also offers bachelor's degree programs in visual arts, music, art history, cinema and media studies, and theater and performance studies. The college's general education core includes an arts requirement, which can be fulfilled by taking classes in subjects such as art history, creative writing, or music. Several thousand major and non-major undergraduates enroll annually in creative and performing arts classes. The university was home to the improvisational Compass Players student comedy troupe, which evolved into The Second City in 1959. The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts opened in 2012, five years after a $35 million gift from alumnus David Logan and his wife Reva. The center includes spaces for exhibitions, performances, classes, and media production. The Logan Center was designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

On April 9, 2025, under the Paul Alivisatos presidency, the University of Chicago merged the Division of the Humanities and University of Chicago Arts to establish the new Division of the Arts & Humanities.

Reputation and rankings

Academic rankings
National
Forbes	14
U.S. News & World Report	11 (tie)
Washington Monthly	35
WSJ/College Pulse	75
Global
ARWU	10
QS	21
THE	14 (tie)
U.S. News & World Report	25

The University of Chicago is considered one of the most prestigious research universities in the United States. ARWU has consistently placed the University of Chicago among the top 10 universities in the world. In 2025, the university was ranked in a tie for 11th by US News & World Report and 14th by Forbes. In 2025, QS World University Rankings placed the university in 21st place worldwide, while THE World University Rankings ranked the university in a tie for 14th.

The university's law and business schools consistently rank among the top three professional schools in the United States. In 2025, the business school was placed in second out of 77 American schools by Bloomberg, fourth in the US by US News & World Report, and second by Fortune. In the same year, it was placed fifteenth in the world by QS World University Rankings and seventeenth by the Financial Times. In 2025, the law school was ranked third in the United States by US News & World Report and second by Above the Law. In the same year, it was ranked 11th globally by QS World University Rankings.

Administration and finance

See also: List of presidents of the University of Chicago

Paul Alivisatos, University of Chicago President

The university is governed by a board of trustees. The board of trustees oversees the long-term development and plans of the university and manages fundraising efforts, and is composed of 55 members including the university president. Directly beneath the president are the provost, fourteen vice presidents (including the chief financial officer and chief investment officer), and twelve deans. The current chair of the board of trustees is David Rubenstein, who has occupied the position since May 2022. The current provost is Katherine Baicker, who was appointed in March 2023. The current president of the University of Chicago is chemist Paul Alivisatos, who assumed the role on September 1, 2021.

The university's endowment was the 21st largest among American educational institutions and state university systems in 2024, valued at roughly $10.1 billion. Since 2016, the university's board of trustees has resisted pressure from students and faculty to divest its investments from fossil fuel companies. As of 2024, such investments remain a part of the university's endowment.

Part of former university President Zimmer's financial plan for the university was an increase in accumulation of debt to finance large building projects. This drew both support and criticism from many in the university community. In 2024, the university budget deficit stood at $288 million; the administration announced plans in November of that year to close the deficit over the next four years.

In 2023, the university agreed to pay $13.5 million to settle a lawsuit that it and other universities conspired to limit financial aid to students.

In fall 2023, the university employed 3,418 academic staff and 23,217 administrative staff (including those from the medical center). In 2024, the university's combined annual budget (including the university proper, the medical center, and the marine biological laboratory) stood at $5.2 billion, with the university's operations making up an additional $2.6 billion. In the same year, the university's total assets were valued at $20.3 billion.

Student body and admissions

Undergraduate admissions statistics
2023 entering classChange vs. 2018
Admit rate	4.8% ( −3.3)
Yield rate	87.9% ( +24.2)

In fall 2024, the university enrolled 7,569 undergraduate students, 10,968 graduate students, and 750 non-degree students. The college class of 2025 is composed of 53% male students and 47% female students. Twenty-seven percent of the class identify as Asian, 19% as Hispanic, and 10% as Black. Eighteen percent of the class is international. The university is need-blind for domestic applicants.

Admissions to the University of Chicago has become highly selective over the past two decades, reflecting changes in the application process, school popularity, and marketing strategy. Between 1996 and 2023, the acceptance rate of the college fell from 71% to 4.7%. For the Class of 2027, the acceptance rate was 4.7%.

The middle 50% band of SAT scores for the undergraduate class of 2025 was 1510–1570 (98th–99th percentiles), the average MCAT score for students entering the Pritzker School of Medicine class of 2024 was 519 (97th percentile), the median GMAT score for students entering the full-time Booth MBA program class of 2023 was 740 (97th percentile), and the median LSAT score for students entering the Law School class of 2021 was 172 (99th percentile).

In 2018, the University of Chicago attracted national headlines by becoming the first major research university to no longer require SAT/ACT scores from college applicants.

Athletics

Official athletics logo

Main article: Chicago Maroons

The University of Chicago hosts 19 varsity sports teams: 10 men's teams and 9 women's teams, all called the Maroons, with 502 students participating in the 2012–2013 school year. The Maroons compete in the NCAA Division III as members of the University Athletic Association (UAA). Their mascot is Phil the Phoenix.

The university was a founding member of the Big Ten Conference and participated in the NCAA Division I men's basketball and football. In 1935, the University of Chicago reached the Sweet Sixteen. In 1935, Chicago Maroons football player Jay Berwanger became the first winner of the Heisman Trophy. However, the university chose to withdraw from the Big Ten Conference in 1946 after University president Robert Maynard Hutchins de-emphasized varsity athletics in 1939 and dropped football. In 1969, Chicago reinstated football as a Division III team, resuming playing its home games at the new Stagg Field.

The University of Chicago is home to the University of Chicago Rugby Football Club (UCRFC). Since 2022, Men's Rugby competes in the Division II Great Midwest Conference (MWC) under National Collegiate Rugby, having previously competed under USA Rugby. It was ranked 15th in the country at the end of the 2024 fall 15s season, falling to Montana State 19-48 in the Sweet Sixteen NCR DII playoff round. It competes in a Rugby 7s circuit in the spring. It shares its conference with Loyola University Chicago, the University of Illinois Chicago, Northwestern University (for which it competes in a yearly cup, the Hutchins-Scott Cup), DePaul University, and Benedictine University. A women's club also exists at the university.

The university is also home to the ultimate frisbee team UChicago Fission.

Student life

Student body composition as of May 10, 2025

Race and ethnicity	Total
White	31%	31
Asian	20%	20
Foreign national	16%	16
Hispanic	17%	17
Other	9%	9
Black	7%	7
Economic diversity
Low-income	14%	14

Student organizations

Students at the University of Chicago operate more than 400 clubs and organizations known as Recognized Student Organizations (RSOs). These include cultural and religious groups, academic clubs and teams, and common-interest organizations. Among notable student organizations are the nation's longest continuously running student film society Doc Films, the organizing committee for the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, and the weekly student newspaper The Chicago Maroon.

The university's Reynolds Club, the student center

Student government

All recognized student organizations are funded by The University of Chicago Student Government. Student Government consists of graduate and undergraduate students elected to represent members from their respective academic units. It is led by an executive committee, chaired by a president with the assistance of two vice presidents (one for administration and the other for student life) who are elected together as a slate by the student body each spring. As of 2025, the Undergraduate Student Government annual budget was greater than $2.5 million.

Fraternities and sororities

As of 2019, there were more than 20 Greek organizations operating on campus. In 2017, approximately 20 to 25 percent of students were members of fraternities or sororities. Numbers published in 2007 by the student activities office stated that one in ten undergraduates participated in Greek life.

Student housing

Max Palevsky Residential Commons is a dormitory completed in 2001 designed by postmodernist Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta.

Main article: Housing at the University of Chicago

On-campus undergraduate students at the University of Chicago participate in a house system in which each student is assigned to one of the university's seven residence hall buildings and to a smaller community within their residence hall called a "house". There are 39 houses, with an average of 70 students in each house. The houses are named after former professors and other historical figures in the university community, such as Eugene Fama.

In the past, only first years were required to live in on-campus housing, but starting with the Class of 2023, students are required to live in housing for the first two years of enrollment. About 60% of undergraduate students live on campus.

For graduate students, the university owns and operates 28 apartment buildings near campus.

Traditions

Qwazy Quad Rally, Scav Hunt 2005

Main articles: Doc Films and University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt

Every May since 1987, the University of Chicago has held the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, in which teams of students compete to obtain notoriously esoteric items from a list. Every January, the university holds a week-long winter festival, Kuviasungnerk/Kangeiko (Kuvia), which includes early morning exercise routines and fitness workshops. The university also annually holds a carnival and concert called Summer Breeze that hosts outside musicians and is home to Doc Films, a student film society founded in 1932 that screens films nightly at the university. Since 1946, the university has organized the Latke-Hamantash Debate, which involves humorous discussions about the relative merits and meanings of latkes and hamantashen. Since 2002, the Ida Noyes Pub has hosted Trivia Nights for university affiliates each Tuesday.

People

For a more comprehensive list, see List of University of Chicago people.

Since the university's establishment in 1890, there have been 101 Nobel laureates across all six categories affiliated with the University of Chicago, twenty-one of whom were pursuing research or on faculty at the university at the time of the award announcement. Of these 101 Nobel Prizes, thirty were in Physics, nineteen in Chemistry, thirteen in Physiology/Medicine, three in Literature, one in Peace, and thirty-three in Economics. Chicago faculty and alumni also include ten Fields Medalists, seventeen National Medal of Science recipients, four Turing Award winners, fifty-eight MacArthur Fellows, five John Bates Clark Medalists, thirty Marshall Scholars, fifty-five Rhodes Scholars, twenty-seven Pulitzer Prize winners, twenty National Humanities Medalists, and eight Olympic medalists.

Notable alumni

Milton Friedman

Bernie Sanders

Carl Sagan

Chicago alumni have gone on to become notable in several fields. In particular, the university has produced CEOs of firms such as Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse; six heads of state across five continents; eight U.S. Cabinet Secretaries; ten U.S. Senators; four central bank Presidents or Directors, including the World Bank; one U.S. Supreme Court justice; and Presidents of Princeton, Northwestern, and MIT.

Notable faculty include three Supreme Court Justices, one central bank governor, and numerous Nobel Prize laureates. Former U.S. president Barack Obama, poet T.S. Eliot, and writer Ralph Ellison have all served on the faculty.

In pop culture

The University of Chicago is the alma mater of fictional characters Harry Burns and Sally Albright (from When Harry Met Sally), Indiana Jones, and Mark Watney (from The Martian). It has served as filming locations for scenes in Divergent, The Fugitive, and Sense8.

Abe Ravelstein, the titular character of the novel Ravelstein, was based off of UChicago faculty member Allan Bloom.

Further reading

• Boyer, John (2015). The University of Chicago: A History. University of Chicago Press.
• Burstein, Stanley M. (2019). "Werner Jaeger Comes to Chicago". International Journal of the Classical Tradition. 26 (3): 319–332. doi:10.1007/s12138-018-0484-8. S2CID 255504312.
• Dunn, William N. (2019). Pragmatism and the origins of the policy sciences: rediscovering Lasswell and the Chicago school. Cambridge University Press.
• Eldred, Juliet Sprung (2019). "'A Highly Complex Set of Interventions': The University of Chicago as Urban Planner, 1890-2017". Chicago Studies. doi:10.6082/uchicago.5538.
• Irwin, Douglas A. (2018). "The midway and beyond: recent work on economics at Chicago". History of Political Economy. 50 (4): 735–775. doi:10.1215/00182702-7202548. S2CID 158553976.
• Jaworski, Gary D. (2022). "On loyalty and betrayal in postwar social science, mainly in Chicago" (PDF). Journal of Classical Sociology. 22 (3): 320–349. doi:10.1177/1468795X211042550. S2CID 238677255.
• Stigler, Stephen M. (2013). "University of Chicago Department of Statistics". In Agresti, A.; Meng, X. L. (eds.). Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics Departments in the U.S.
• Storr, Richard J. (1966). Harper's University: The Beginnings. (a major scholarly history)
• Veith, Ilza; McLean, Franklin C. (1952). The University of Chicago Clinics and Clinical Departments, 1927–1952: A Brief Outline of the Origins, the Formative Years, and the Present State of Medicine at the University of Chicago.
• Vermeulen, Cornelius W. (1977). For the Greatest Good to the Largest Number: A History of the Medical Center, the University of Chicago, 1927–1977.
• Webber, Henry S. (2005). "The University of Chicago and Its Neighbors: A Case Study in Community Development". In Perry, David C.; Wiewel, Wim (eds.). The University as Urban Developer: Case Studies and Analysis.
• White, Woodie T. (1977). The Study of Education at the University of Chicago 1892–1958 (PhD dissertation). University of Chicago.
• Wind, James P. (1987). The Bible and the University: The Messianic Vision of William Rainey Harper.

External links

• Official website
• Illinois Great Places – University of Chicago Quadrangles
• Society of Architectural Historians SAH ARCHIPEDIA entry on the University of Chicago Quadrangles