Northwestern University was established in 1851, when its Act of Incorporation was passed by the Illinois legislature. It describes itself as a comprehensive research university and has three campuses: Evanston and Chicago in Illinois, and Doha in Qatar, where Northwestern University in Qatar was founded in 2008 in Education City.
Its facts page lists 12 colleges and schools, from the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (1851) and Feinberg School of Medicine (1859) to the School of Professional Studies (1933) and Northwestern University in Qatar. The page reports more than 9,000 undergraduates, more than 14,000 graduate students and a total endowment of $15.3 billion; none of these figures is dated. Mung Chiang, formerly president of Purdue University, became Northwestern’s 18th president on 1 July 2026, according to Northwestern Magazine, succeeding Michael Schill.