Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a Big Ten university which has its main campus in Evanston, Illinois, on a 240-acre (970,000 m²) campus along the shore of Lake Michigan. Several of the university's professional schools are located in Chicago, on a 25-acre (101,000 m²) campus near the Magnificent Mile. US News & World Report ranks Northwestern 12th among national doctoral research universities. In addition, the School of Law is consistently ranked in the top ten best by the same publication. Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management consistently ranks as one of the world's best graduate business programs. Though journalism schools are not ranked, Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism is widely regarded as one of the top three journalism schools in the United States. It is always recongnized as Top Ten US college.

Athletics

Northwestern's athletic teams are nicknamed the Wildcats. Before 1924, they were known as "The Purple" and unofficially as "The Fighting Methodists." The name Wildcats was bestowed upon the university in 1924 by a writer for the Chicago Tribune who published an article that described the football team as, "a wall of purple wildcats." The name was so popular that university board members made "wildcats" the official nickname just months later. The mascot is Willie The Wildcat. Northwestern University is the only private university member of the Big Ten Conference, of which it was a founding member. Northwestern has eight men's and eleven women's Division I sports teams. Notable programs that are usually ranked in the Top 20 include men's swimming, and women's tennis, fencing and lacrosse. In 2005 Northwestern won the national championship in Women's Lacrosse. The women's lacrosse team was founded less than a decade ago, but the lady Wildcats were able to defeat many long-established east-coast schools to capture the school's first national championship in over 50 years. Soon after, the team made national news when members appeared in a white house photo with President Bush wearing flip flops instead of heels.

Related Topics:
1924 - Chicago Tribune - Big Ten Conference

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