unitid 147767 · Evanston, IL · private nonprofit 4-year · city (small)
Northwestern University
University in Evanston, Illinois, US
- founded
- 1851
- enrollment 2023
- 26,993
- predominant degree
- Bachelor's
- motto
- “Quaecumque sunt vera”
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. wikipedia rev 1360686016 ↗
scorecard 2026-06 · percentiles within private nonprofit 4-years
The record
admission rate
8%
2nd pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
undergraduates
9,201
98th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
Pell share
19%
undergrads on Pell grants
18th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
completion
95%
finish within 150% time
97th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
sticker cost / yr
$91,250
100th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
avg net price / yr
$29,167
after aid, aided students
78th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
median earnings, 10 yr
$89,363
after entry, Title IV students
95th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
median grad debt
$15,000
10th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
what families actually pay
Cost
Sticker price is a fiction for most families — net price is what aided students pay after grants, by family income.
Average net price by family income, 2023–24 aid cohort
Families earning under $30k paid $1,764 per year after aid.
Dashed hollow marks are privacy-suppressed brackets — not zero. Band: middle half of private nonprofit 4-years (all incomes).
Who enrolls, by family income
- 0-30k22%
- 30-48k15%
- 48-75k15%
- 75-110knot reported
- 110k+not reported
- Median family income
- $58,836
- First-generation students
- 15%
- In-state tuition & fees
- $68,322
earnings · debt · programs
Outcomes
Median earnings after entry, working grads with federal aid
Ten years out, the median graduate earns 6.0× the median graduate debt.
Earnings cover federally aided (Title IV) students only.
What programs pay — top fields of study
| program | grads | earn 5 yr | debt |
|---|---|---|---|
| Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods. | 2,055 | $162,247 | — |
| Radio, Television, and Digital Communication. | 414 | — | — |
| Economics. | 373 | $125,639 | $16,227 |
| Clinical, Counseling and Applied Psychology. | 372 | $56,897 | — |
| Finance and Financial Management Services. | 309 | — | — |
| Law. | 304 | $256,851 | — |
| Radio, Television, and Digital Communication. | 247 | $50,861 | $15,500 |
| Legal Research and Advanced Professional Studies. | 234 | — | — |
| Marketing. | 222 | — | — |
| Psychology, General. | 211 | $71,228 | $14,500 |
| Computer Science. | 181 | — | — |
| Business Administration, Management and Operations. | 173 | $227,307 | — |
— is privacy suppression at small programs, never zero. Earnings are median, 5 years after completing.
annual scorecard files, 1996–2026
Trajectory
Line breaks are years where the measure wasn't collected — a gap is not a zero.
Admission rate
Price per year
- sticker
- net
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
Undergraduates
wikidata · 7,023 people recorded
Memory
Wikidata is not an alumni census: a person appears only when volunteer editors record them. Counts measure the archive's memory - access x achievement x documentation - never placement rates or institutional quality.
Field fingerprint — share of recorded alumni by field
Women among recorded alumni, by birth decade
People without a recorded gender are excluded; decades with fewer than 5 recorded alumni are dropped.
Wikipedia attention
monthly article views since 2015
most recorded occupationsresearcher (1,784) · university teacher (732) · basketball player (503) · writer (294) · journalist (258) · politician (240) · economist (229) · actor (221)
Nobel laureates who studied here
- Saul Bellow Literature 1976
- Val Logsdon Fitch Physics 1980
- George Stigler Economics 1982
- Robert F. Furchgott Medicine 1998
- Peter Howitt Economics 2025
The portrait wall
Sized by nothing, ordered by Wikipedia footprint (language editions).
Saul Bellow
120 wikis · Public domain
George R. R. Martin
112 wikis · CC BY 4.0
Charlton Heston
93 wikis · Public domain
Hugh Hefner
81 wikis · CC BY-SA 3.0
Garry Marshall
74 wikis · CC BY-SA 2.0
Zooey Deschanel
72 wikis · CC BY 4.0
Cindy Crawford
72 wikis · CC BY-SA 2.0
David Schwimmer
70 wikis · CC BY-SA 2.0
Patricia Neal
70 wikis · Public domain
Jennifer Jones
66 wikis · Public domain
Val Logsdon Fitch
65 wikis · Public domain
Alexander De Croo
62 wikis · CC BY 2.0
Pharrell Williams
61 wikis · CC BY 2.0
Stephen Colbert
61 wikis · CC BY 2.0
Also recorded: Sidney Sheldon.
nearest neighbors in sector
Compare with peers
built 2026-07-17
Provenance
- U.S. Dept. of Education College Scorecard, 2026-06 release. Earnings cover federally aided (Title IV) students only. Suppressed values are null, never imputed.
- Annual Scorecard files 1996-2026. A null in early years usually means the measure was not yet collected, not zero.
- Coordinates and locale describe the campus address, not where students live.
- Wikidata is not an alumni census: a person appears only when volunteer editors record them. Counts measure the archive's memory - access x achievement x documentation - never placement rates or institutional quality.
- Images are from Wikimedia Commons under free licenses. Render the credit line (artist + license) with every image.
- Lead text from Wikipedia (revision 1360686016), CC BY-SA 4.0.