Locating American Universities Quiz

One of the U.S.' oldest post-secondary institutions, Yale has also, historically, been one of the most prestigious. Located in New Haven, Connecticut, Yale is one of the Ivy League schools and has educated numerous U.S. Presidents, Nobel Laureates, and award-winners in maths and sciences. Perhaps best-known for its renown in the fields of politics, law, and business, Yale has also fielded numerous Hollywood celebrities including Academy Award winners Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster, and Frances McDormand.

Stanford University sits near Palo Alto in the San Francisco Bay Area and is one of the foremost establishments for higher education in California. Opening in 1891, Stanford is strongly affiliated with Silicon Valley and the evolution of technology throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Amongst the alumni of this school are the creators of the Internet and the founders of Google, Instagram, and Snapchat (amongst others).

Historically, it's also been one of the most selective schools in the United States, taking in a small amount of its applicants year over year.

Located in Provo, Utah, Brigham Young University, founded in 1875, is one of a small handful of higher education facilities to have significant backing from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (ie. the Mormon church). This particular institution has grown to become an unlikely site of culture over the decades, having art galleries and museums on its campus, one of the highest-regarded university libraries in the United States, and showcasing numerous architectural styles amongst its buildings. Brigham Young is also known for its missionary work with nearly half of its students studying abroad in conjunction with humanitarian and religious efforts.

Found chiefly in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins University is perhaps best known for its approach to research and development, allowing its student body to participate in ongoing studies in the fields of medicine and health, engineering, and space and aeronautics.

It's because of this that Johns Hopkins has, historically, been second-to-none for biomedical studies and nursing. Dozens of Nobel Prize winners have emerged from Johns Hopkins, sharing the alumnus status with businessman Michael Bloomberg, environmentalist and author Rachel Carson, film director Wes Craven, and Gertrude Stein.

Found in the city of Cambridge in the Greater Boston, Massachusetts Area, Harvard is one of the prestigious law schools anywhere in the world, having been created in 1636 and successfully rooted itself as a top American institution. One of the Ivy League schools, Harvard is not only one of the wealthiest schools in the world in terms of endowment funds, but one of the most well-stocked, having one of the largest library systems anywhere on Earth.

It should come as no surprise that its alumni tend to find fame and fortune with its past students including several U.S. Presidents, countless Pulitzer winners, royal scholars (including kings!), multinational CEOs, world-famous novelists, Olympians, and Academy Award winners.

Another Ivy League destination, Cornell University was founded in Ithaca, New York in 1865, becoming one of a small handful of institutions to leverage Abraham Lincoln's land grants to build up their facilities. In the modern day, Cornell stands as one of the U.S.' most prestigious and most varied university experiences, offering degrees in arts, medicine, tech, engineering, and more.

In addition to having its main campus in Upstate New York, it also operates out of New York City and, in 2004, the city of Doha, Qatar. Notable Cornell alumni include Toni Morrison, Christopher Reeve, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Although originally established in the city of Trinity, North Carolina in the 1830s, the institution known as Duke University would only last there, as Trinity College, until moving to Durham, NC in the 1890s and then changing its name to Duke in 1924. One of the most difficult institutions for applicants to gain acceptance into in the U.S., it's well-known for the high caliber of its medical teachings, its graduate degrees, and its sports teams. Richard Nixon, Tim Cook, and Ken Jeong are just a few of its alumni.

The University of Notre Dame du Lac would be the selection to place in the State of Indiana, just outside the city of South Bend. Home to the Fighting Irish, Notre Dame's collegiate sports teams are amongst the most well-regarded in the U.S., but these athletic pursuits shouldn't detract from a long history of well-known scholarly and cultural points of note. Built as a Catholic institution by the first ordained priest of the U.S. (Edward Sorin), it would grow to become one of the foremost research facilities in the country, leading in sciences and the arts on an international scale.

Formed as an educational institution before the American Revolution, Princeton University is both an Ivy League school and one of the nation's oldest and most reputable. Found in New Jersey (in Princeton), the school is known for prestige academics across multiple disciplines, a well-founded sense of tradition, and its increasingly diverse student body, making it one of the most varied multicultural alumni bodies in the U.S.

This being said, Princeton is also amongst the most affluent; the majority of its students, historically, have come from wealth.

Some of its alumni have made it to the White House, the U.S. Supreme Court, Nobel laureateship, and plenty more; Princeton generally leads to success.

Named after the school's initial investor and built in Nashville, Tennessee, Vanderbilt doesn't top the lists in terms of most viable graduate institutions but this might be due in part to its historically low acceptance rates. Due to its selective acceptance of enrolment, it's historically been one the hardest schools for applicants to get into. What students get on the inside is a wide variety of innovative research programs and numerous disciplines to explore. Quite significantly, Vanderbilt has been the alma mater for numerous heads of state of other nations (including South Korea, Panama, and Somalia).