Boston University (universally known as “BU”) traces its roots to a Methodist Church training college, the Newbury Biblical Institute, founded in Newbury, Vermont, by a group of Boston-based Methodist ministers and elders. Ten years later, in 1849, the school was transferred to the much larger town (and state capital) of Concord, New Hampshire, where it operated as the Concord Biblical Institute for 20 more years. Finally, in 1869, it moved again, this time to Boston itself, under the new name of the Boston Theological Institute.
Just two years after that, in 1871, the school’s name was changed one last time—to Boston University. BU was built up piecemeal over a period of many years, in several different Boston locations, including the Beacon Hill and Copley Square neighborhoods. It only came to occupy its present main campus—in the Back Bay neighborhood along the south bank of the Charles River across from MIT—during the 1930s.
Despite BU’s origins as a Methodist Church training institute, its new 1871 charter stated that there should be no religious test for entrance to the university at large (the School of Theology excepted), placing BU among the ranks of the first American universities to officially sever their ties to their religious past. BU was also early in admitting women and African Americans to its student body on an equal basis with white men.
From today’s perspective, the transplantation of the school to Boston was prescient, as the city and its immediately surrounding region now have the highest concentration of top-ranking colleges and universities in the US. In addition to BU, the greater Boston area is home to Northeastern University and Emerson College (also in Boston proper), to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (in Cambridge), to Boston College (in Chestnut Hill), to Brandeis University (in Waltham), and to Tufts University (in Medford and Somerville).
Nine persons connected with Boston University have won the Nobel Prize. Of these, the best known are the:
Then there is the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the Baptist minister and primary leader of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s until his assassination in 1968, who obtained his doctorate in systematic theology from BU in 1955, and who received the Noble Peace Prize in 1964.
It is also worth noting that King’s dissertation advisor at BU was Edgar Sheffield Brightman, who taught philosophy there for more than 30 years. Brightman’s own teacher, Borden Parker Bowne, was the founder of the American philosophical movement known as personalism; he, too, taught at BU for 30 years. Finally, one of Brightman’s students, Peter A. Bertocci, also taught for three decades at BU, where among other things he edited MLK’s papers. Thus, the three most important figures in the history of American personalism all made their long and distinguished careers at BU, which may be considered the beating heart of that significant American philosophical movement.
Another well-known philosopher, the Kant-scholar, and conservative public intellectual, John Silber, served as President of BU for some 25 years.
Among other well-known BU-connected individuals, we may mention:
Finally, William Howard Taft lectured at BU’s law school between 1918 and 1921, in between serving as the 17th President of the United States and the 10th Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Taft is the only person ever to hold both of those high positions.
According to Wikipedia, Boston University is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campus in Newbury, Vermont, before moving to Boston in 1867.
Annual Applications | Acceptance | Graduation Rate | Median SAT Score | Median ACT Score |
---|---|---|---|---|
75,778 | 19% | 89% | 1405 | 32 |
Tuition (in-state) |
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$59,816 |
Income | Average Net Cost |
---|---|
0 - 30K | $12,982 |
30K - 48K | $11,782 |
48K - 75K | $18,458 |
75K - 110K | $29,925 |
110K+ | $50,125 |
If you graduate from Boston University, then you can expect to earn an average of $75,900 per year. You also have a 92% chance of being employed after 10 years.
Demographic data is for full-time, on-campus students.
Student Body | Under-Grads | Graduates |
---|---|---|
32,033 | 21,538 | 10,495 |
Boston University is located at One Silber Way, Boston MA 02215
Boston University has a violent crime rate of less than .01% and a property crime rate of less than .01%. Boston has a violent crime rate of less than .01% and a property crime rate of less than .01%.
Boston University is known for it's academic work in the following disciplines:
Boston University's most influential alumni faculty include professors and professionals in the fields of Social Work, Communications, and Business. Here are some of Boston University's most famous alumni: