Universities in the United States

There are about 3,000 universities that offer undergraduate programs. More than 1,000 universities that offer Masters programs, and approximately 400 of these offer Doctoral and Post-Doctoral degrees (PhD). There are several types of universities in the U.S.

 

Public Universities

These are state-affiliated institutions and some may include the words "State University" in their title. They are relatively inexpensive when compared to the other universities nation-wide, but getting admission into these universities can be more difficult than a private institution. State universities tend to be very large with enrollments of 20,000 or more students. Also, many government-funded research projects are allocated to state universities, which provide research assistantship opportunities for highly qualified students. Most of the universities offer partial or full tuition fee waivers to teaching and research assistant students.

Private Universities

Private institutions are supported by student tuition, investment income, research contracts, and private donations. Tuition fees tend to be higher at private universities than at state universities, but they charge the same tuition to both state and out-of-state residents.

The quality of education is equal between public and private universities. The main differences are funding and fees. Public universities are funded by state governments, student tuition payments, and private donations. Since public universities are supported by state governments, they give enrollment preference and lower tuition fees to the in-state students. All international students are subjected to out-of-state tuition. However, the tuition is usually lower at most state institutions than at private institutions, even for those who are out-of-state residents.

Community Colleges

These are institutions normally run by a certain community for their own people. Many high school graduates who cannot afford to go to a university, or who simply are not ready for a four-year institution, will choose to go to community college. These institutions accept international students, but they have a fewer number of attendees, as most students are commuters from the near-by area. Although community colleges focus on undergraduate programs, some offer good graduate programs as well. These institutions will be mostly located in suburbs, and the basic advantage in these institutions is minimum academic fees.

Technical Institutes

These are institutions mainly specializing in engineering degrees, mostly at the Masters and Doctoral level. These institutions are famous for their renowned research programs and most international students are attracted to these sorts of institutions.

Admission into universities is very competitive, and decisions are made based on the student's application package, including resume, samples of previous work, and letters of recommendation. Academic fees vary from university to university and usually range $7,000-35,000 per year. An average academic fee is $10,000-12,000 per year, excluding living expenses.

 

University Ranking

Various organizations define U.S. university ranking by various factors, such as number of programs, acceptance percentage, and enrollment. There is no official university ranking list available to students by the government or any educational-related organization. The most commonly used ranking report is the one published by US News.

 

TOP 20 Ranked universities.

Rank	Institution Name	City	State
	University of Southern California	Los Angeles	CA
	Columbia University	New York	NY
	Purdue University, Main Campus	West Lafayette	IN
	New York University	New York	NY
	University of Texas at Austin	Austin	TX
	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	Champaign	IL
	University of Michigan - Ann Arbor	Ann Arbor	MI
	Boston University	Boston	MA
	University of California - Los Angeles	Los Angeles	CA
	The Ohio State University, Main Campus	Columbus	OH
	Texas A&M University	College Station	TX
	University of Maryland College Park	College Park	MD
	Indiana University at Bloomington	Bloomington	IN
	Penn State University - University Park	University Park	PA
	University at Buffalo - SUNY	Buffalo	NY
	University of Pennsylvania	Philadelphia	PA
	University of Wisconsin - Madison	Madison	WI
	Harvard University	Cambridge	MA
	Florida International University	Miami	FL
	University of Houston	Houston	TX

Vocabulary notes

Hire-нанимать

Schoolmaster-школьный учитель

plot of land-участок земли

attend-посещать

elementary and secondary school-начальная и средняя школа

curriculum-учебная программа

guidance and funding-управление и финансирование

upon completion-по завершении

enroll-включать в список

obtain-получать, достигать

be admitted-быть принятым

bachelors degree-степень бакалавра

prior to-до

graduate school- аспирантура

approximately-приблизительно

allocate-размещать, распределять

tuition fee-плата за обучение

waiver-отказ

partial-частичный

investment income

private donations-частные пожертвования

community-сообщество

suburb-пригород

application package-пакет документов

samples of previous work-образцы предыдущей работы

average-средний

excluding living expenses-исключая расходы на жизнь

Famous American People

 

Presidents

George Washington

First President

1789-1797

Born: February 22, 1732 in Westmoreland County, Virginia

Died: December 14, 1799 in Mount Vernon, Virginia

Married to Martha Dandridge Washington

 

On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States.

He pursued two intertwined interests: military arts and western expansion. At 16 he helped survey Shenandoah lands for Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1754, he fought the first skirmishes of what grew into the French and Indian War. The next year was an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock. From 1759 to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Washington managed his lands around Mount Vernon and served in the Virginia House of Burgesses.

When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington, one of the Virginia delegates, was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. On July 3, 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he took command of his ill-trained troops and embarked upon a war that was to last six gruelling years.

Washington soon realized that the Nation under its Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, so he became a prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. When the new Constitution was ratified, they Washington President.

Wearied of politics, feeling old, he retired at the end of his second.

He died of a throat infection December 14, 1799. For months the Nation mourned him

Thomas Jefferson

Third President

1801-1809

Born: April 13, 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia

Died: July 4, 1826 in Monticello in Virginia

Married to Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson

 

This powerful advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter and surveyor, some 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, a Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the "silent member" of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786.

Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France in 1785. His sympathy for the French Revolution led him into conflict with Alexander Hamilton when Jefferson was Secretary of State in President Washington's Cabinet. He resigned in 1793.

Sharp political conflict developed, and two separate parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, began to form. Jefferson gradually assumed leadership of the Republicans, who sympathized with the revolutionary cause in France. Attacking Federalist policies, he opposed a strong centralized Government and championed the rights of states.

He became Vice President, in1796. In 1800 the defect caused a more serious problem. Republican electors, attempting to name both a President and a Vice President from their own party, cast a tie vote between Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives settled the tie. Hamilton, disliking both Jefferson and Burr, nevertheless urged Jefferson's election.

When Jefferson assumed the Presidency, the crisis in France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey so unpopular in the West, yet reduced the national debt by a third. He also sent a naval squadron to fight the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean. Further, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.

During Jefferson's second term, he was increasingly preoccupied with keeping the Nation from involvement in the Napoleonic wars, though both England and France interfered with the neutral rights of American merchantmen. Jefferson's attempted solution, an embargo upon American shipping, worked badly and was unpopular.

Jefferson retired to Monticello to ponder such projects as his grand designs for the University of Virginia. He died on July 4, 1826.

Abraham Lincoln

Sixteenth President

1861-1865

Born: February 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Hardin County, Kentucky

Died: April 15, 1865. Lincoln died the morning after being shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. by John Wilkes Booth, an actor.

Married to Mary Todd Lincoln

 

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years.

In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... "

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South.

 

Theodore Roosevelt

Twenty-Sixth President

1901-1909

Born: October 27, 1858 in New York, New York

Died: January 6, 1919 in Oyster Bay, New York

Married to Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt

 

Theodore Roosevelt, 43, became the youngest President in the Nation's history.

He was born in New York City in 1858 into a wealthy family, but he too struggled--against ill health--and in his triumph became an advocate of the tenuous life.

During the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt was lieutenant colonel of the Rough Rider Regiment, which he led on a charge at the battle of San Juan. Boss Tom Platt, needing a hero to draw attention away from scandals in New York State, accepted Roosevelt as the Republican candidate for Governor in 1898. Roosevelt won and served with distinction.

Roosevelt emerged spectacularly as a "trust buster" by forcing the dissolution of a great railroad combination in the Northwest. Other antitrust suits under the Sherman Act followed.

Roosevelt steered the United States more actively into world politics. He liked to quote a favorite proverb, "Speak softly and carry a big stick.... "

Aware of the strategic need for a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific, Roosevelt ensured the construction of the Panama Canal. His corollary to the Monroe Doctrine prevented the establishment of foreign bases in the Caribbean and arrogated the sole right of intervention in Latin America to the United States.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War, reached a Gentleman's Agreement on immigration with Japan, and sent the Great White Fleet on a goodwill tour of the world.

Some of Theodore Roosevelt's most effective achievements were in conservation. He added enormously to the national forests in the West, reserved lands for public use, and fostered great irrigation projects.

Leaving the Presidency in 1909, Roosevelt went on an African safari, then jumped back into politics. In 1912 he ran for President on a Progressive ticket. To reporters he once remarked that he felt as fit as a bull moose, the name of his new party.

While campaigning in Milwaukee, he was shot in the chest by a fanatic. Roosevelt soon recovered, but his words at that time would have been applicable at the time of his death in 1919: "No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way."

Harry S Truman

Thirty-Third President

1945-1953

Born: May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri

Died: December 26, 1972 in Independence, Missouri

Married to Elizabeth Virginia Wallace Truman

 

Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884.

He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court (an administrative position) in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars.

Soon after V-E Day, the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman, after consultations with his advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed.

In June 1945 Truman witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations, hopefully established to preserve peace.

In 1947 as the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and, through guerrillas, threatened to take over Greece, he asked Congress to aid the two countries, enunciating the program that bears his name--the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, named for his Secretary of State, stimulated spectacular economic recovery in war-torn western Europe.

He was negotiating a military alliance to protect Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949.

Deciding not to run again, he retired to Independence; at age 88.

John Kennedy

Thirty-Fifth President

1961-1963

Born: May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts

Died: November 22, 1963. Killed by an assassin's bullet in Dallas, Texas

Married to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy

 

On November 22, 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die. Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy.

Back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation, he wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

Shortly after his inauguration, Kennedy permitted a band of Cuban exiles, already armed and trained, to invade their homeland. The attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro was a failure. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union renewed its campaign against West Berlin. Kennedy replied by reinforcing the Berlin garrison and increasing the Nation's military strength, including new efforts in outer space. Confronted by this reaction, Moscow, after the erection of the Berlin Wall, relaxed its pressure in central Europe.

Instead, the Russians now sought to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. When this was discovered by air reconnaissance in October 1962, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for Cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to take the missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility of nuclear blackmail.

Kennedy now contended that both sides had a vital interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race--a contention which led to the test ban treaty of 1963.

Ronald Reagan

Fortieth President

1981-1989

Born: February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois

Died: June 5, 2004 in Bel-Air, California

Married to Nancy Davis Reagan

On February 6, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois. Upon graduation, he became a radio sports announcer. A screen test in 1937 won him a contract in Hollywood. During the next two decades he appeared in 53 films.

As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan became embroiled in disputes over the issue of Communism in the film industry; his political views shifted from liberal to conservative. He toured the country as a television host, becoming a spokesman for conservatism. In 1966 he was elected Governor of California by a margin of a million votes; he was re-elected in 1970.

On January 20, 1981, Reagan took office. Only 69 days later he was shot by a would-be assassin, but quickly recovered and returned to duty. Dealing skilfully with Congress, Reagan obtained legislation to stimulate economic growth, curb inflation, increase employment, and strengthen national defence. He embarked upon a course of cutting taxes and Government expenditures, refusing to deviate from it when the strengthening of defence forces led to a large deficit.

A renewal of national self-confidence by 1984 helped Reagan and Bush win a second term. In 1986 Reagan obtained an overhaul of the income tax code, which eliminated many deductions and exempted millions of people with low incomes. At the end of his administration, the Nation was enjoying its longest recorded period of peacetime prosperity without recession or depression.

In foreign policy, Reagan sought to achieve "peace through strength." During his two terms he increased defence spending 35 percent, but sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union. In dramatic meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he negotiated a treaty that would eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles. By ordering naval escorts in the Persian Gulf, he maintained the free flow of oil during the Iran-Iraq war. In keeping with the Reagan Doctrine, he gave support to anti-Communist insurgencies in Central America, Asia, and Africa.

 

Richard M. Nixon

Thirty-Seventh President

1969-1974

Born: January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California

Died: April 22, 1994 in New York, New York

Married to Patricia Ryan Nixon

 

During his Presidency, Nixon succeeded in ending American fighting in Viet Nam and improving relations with the U.S.S.R. and China. But the Watergate scandal brought fresh divisions to the country and ultimately led to his resignation.

His election in 1968 had climaxed a career unusual on two counts: his early success and his comeback after being defeated for President in 1960 and for Governor of California in 1962.

During World War II, Nixon served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific.

On leaving the service, he was elected to Congress from his California district. In 1950, he won a Senate seat. Two years later, General Eisenhower selected Nixon, age 39, to be his running mate.

His accomplishments while in office included revenue sharing, the end of the draft, new anticrime laws, and a broad environmental program. As he had promised, he appointed Justices of conservative philosophy to the Supreme Court. One of the most dramatic events of his first term occurred in 1969, when American astronauts made the first moon landing.

Some of his most acclaimed achievements came in his quest for world stability. During visits in 1972 to Beijing and Moscow, he reduced tensions with China and the U.S.S.R. His summit meetings with Russian leader Leonid I. Brezhnev produced a treaty to limit strategic nuclear weapons. In January 1973, he announced an accord with North Viet Nam to end American involvement in Indochina.

Within a few months, his administration was embattled over the so-called "Watergate" scandal, stemming from a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee during the 1972 campaign. The break-in was traced to officials of the Committee to Re-elect the President. Nixon denied any personal involvement, but the courts forced him to yield tape recordings which indicated that he had, in fact, tried to divert the investigation.

Faced with what seemed almost certain impeachment, Nixon announced on August 8, 1974, that he would resign the next day to begin "that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America."

In his last years, Nixon gained praise as an elder statesman. By the time of his death on April 22, 1994, he had written numerous books on his experiences in public life and on foreign policy

 

Literature