City: Chicago, IL

Category: Education

Telephone: Evanston: (847) 491-3741; Chic

Address: 633 Clark St.

Description: Although residents in Evanston often complain that Northwestern doesn’t pay property taxes, the school does contribute $6 million in other fees and taxes and supplies its own police force and snow plowers. Besides, Evanston might not have existed at all without Northwestern. Back in 1853, when the initial area was purchased for Northwestern—the school was founded in 1850 to serve the Northwest Territory comprising Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota—the land was simply open country about 12 miles north of nascent Chicago. Evanston was actually named for one of the school’s founders, John Evans. And while the facility’s founders originally purchased 379 acres of land along the scenic lakefront, today the university comprises just 240 acres on its Evanston campus. Among its 10 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools and approximately 16,500 full-time students, its largest population of about 4,300 is concentrated in the undergrad College of Arts and Sciences. Second to that are the 1,800-or-so who beat the competition for spots in the prestigious Kellogg School of Management, typically ranked in the top five in the nation. The accolades are equally outstanding for its undergrad and graduate journalism programs, law school, and medical school. The only private institution in the Big Ten athletic conference, Northwestern has an avid athletic spirit for its NCAA Division I Wildcats who play in eight men’s and 11 women’s teams and whose football team made it to the Rose Bowl in the 1995–96 season (sadly, they lost). A slew of well-known alumni include Chicago’s new mayor Rahm Emanuel, as well as screen stars Zach Braff, Stephen Colbert, Garry Marshall, and David Schwimmer—a testament to the acclaimed theater school whose student productions are often on equal footing with professional ones.