Northwestern University (NU) is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851, it is the oldest chartered university in Illinois. Northwestern was initially affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church but later became non-sectarian. By 1900, the university was the third-largest university in the United States, after Michigan and Harvard. Northwestern became a founding member of the Big Ten Conference in 1896 and joined the Association of American Universities in 1917.
Northwestern is composed of eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools in the fields of management, law, journalism, engineering, medicine, and others. As of 2024, the university had an endowment of $15.6 billion, an annual budget of around $3.3 billion, and research funding of over $1 billion. The university fields 19 intercollegiate athletic teams, the Northwestern Wildcats, which compete in the NCAA Division I in the Big Ten Conference.