The University of Rome “La Sapienza” is the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world in terms of the number of students. It was founded on April 20, 1303, by Pope Boniface VIII. 1)
Stanford University is a fairly young university from California (founded 1891), while Princeton, Yale, and Columbia belong to the “Ivy League” - a group of universities founded back in the days of the British colonies. This group is completed by Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Penn. 2)
The oldest honorary student fraternity in the United States is The Phi Beta Kappa Society, founded in 1776. The first chapter was formed as a secret society for literature and philosophy at the College of William and Mary, the second at Harvard University (1779), and the third at Yale University in the same year. The first woman was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Vermont in 1875, the first black student two years later. Famous sorority members include Alexander Graham Bell, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Glenn Close, Henry Kissinger, Henry Paulson, and many others. 3)
America's prestigious technical university, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is located next to Harvard. The city of Cambridge, where the universities are located, is right next to Boston. It was founded along with Boston by the first British settlers who arrived in Massachusetts Bay in 1630. 4)
Silicon Valley is strongly associated with Stanford University. The distance from Stanford University to Google's headquarters is only 4 miles. It is 11 miles to Intel's headquarters and 13 miles to Cisco's headquarters. 5)
The oldest university in the world in continuous operation is the University of Bologna, founded in the Holy Roman Empire in 1088. This is also the place where the first woman earned a degree and taught at a university. Notable alumni from the University of Bologna include Umberto Eco, Paracelsus (the initiator of toxicology), Nicolaus Copernicus, Luigi Galvani, Guglielmo Marconi, and Enzo Ferrari. 6)
The University of Oxford is the second oldest University in the world, founded around 1096. It's one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world; its alumni include 55 Noble Prize laureates, 28 British prime ministers, and over 30 international political leaders (including Bill Clinton). Many well-known scientists and inventors were connected to Oxford, including Stephen Hawking, Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the World Wide Web), Dorothy Hodgkin, Roger Penrose, Stephen Wolfram, Richard Dawkins, Edwin Hubble, and more 7)