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unitid 186131 · Princeton, NJ · private nonprofit 4-year · city (small)

Princeton University

Private university in Princeton, New Jersey, US

founded
1746
enrollment 2023
8,946
predominant degree
Bachelor's
motto
“Dei Sub Numine Viget”
Campus of Princeton University

Magneticcarpet · CC BY-SA 3.0

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark in 1747 and then to its Mercer County campus in Princeton nine years later. It officially became a university in 1896 and was subsequently renamed Princeton University. wikipedia rev 1364252051 ↗

scorecard 2026-06 · percentiles within private nonprofit 4-years

The record

admission rate

5%

1st pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

undergraduates

5,709

94th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

Pell share

19%

undergrads on Pell grants

19th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

completion

98%

finish within 150% time

98th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

sticker cost / yr

$84,040

94th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

avg net price / yr

$6,128

after aid, aided students

3rd pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

median earnings, 10 yr

$110,066

after entry, Title IV students

99th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

median grad debt

$10,320

3rd 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 $41 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

family income mix not reported

Median family income
$37,036
First-generation students
28%
In-state tuition & fees
$62,688

earnings · debt · programs

Outcomes

Median earnings after entry, working grads with federal aid

Ten years out, the median graduate earns 10.7× the median graduate debt.

Earnings cover federally aided (Title IV) students only.

What programs pay — top fields of study

programgradsearn 5 yrdebt
Computer Science.201——
Economics.132—$11,250
Public Policy Analysis.114$98,995$10,527
Public Policy Analysis.100$112,516—
Operations Research.77——
History.72——
Political Science and Government.57$94,020—
Computer Science.54——
Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology.52——
Electrical, Electronics, and Communications Engineering.50——
Research and Experimental Psychology.50——
Mechanical Engineering.45——

— 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 · 11,262 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 (1,971) · university teacher (1,904) · politician (730) · mathematician (716) · lawyer (688) · writer (555) · basketball player (533) · physicist (419)

Nobel laureates who studied here

  • Woodrow Wilson Peace 1919
  • Arthur Holly Compton Physics 1927
  • Eugene O'Neill Literature 1936
  • Clinton Davisson Physics 1937
  • Edwin McMillan Chemistry 1951
  • John Bardeen Physics 1956
  • Willard Libby Chemistry 1960
  • Robert Hofstadter Physics 1961
  • Q39246 Physics 1965
  • John Bardeen Physics 1972
  • Steven Weinberg Physics 1979
  • Gary S. Becker Economics 1992
  • John Forbes Nash Economics 1994
  • Richard Smalley Chemistry 1996
  • James Heckman Economics 2000
  • Michael Spence Economics 2001
  • Frank Wilczek Physics 2004
  • Edward C. Prescott Economics 2004
  • Yoichiro Nambu Physics 2008
  • Lloyd Shapley Economics 2012
  • Oliver Hart Economics 2016
  • Kip S. Thorne Physics 2017
  • Frances Arnold Chemistry 2018
  • Jim Peebles Physics 2019
  • David Card Economics 2021
  • Joshua Angrist Economics 2021
  • Maria Ressa Peace 2021
  • Mary E. Brunkow Medicine 2025

The portrait wall

Sized by nothing, ordered by Wikipedia footprint (language editions).

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 1364252051), CC BY-SA 4.0.