Main Quadrangle

The University of Chicago is an urban research university located in Chicago’s historic, residential Hyde Park neighborhood. Hyde Park is a home to lifelong residents, diverse ideas, beautiful vistas, thriving culture, and more than 60 percent of our faculty and their families. UChicago’s 217-acre campus was designed as a botanic garden (complete with ponds, hundred-year-old trees, and ivy-wreathed gargoyles) and provides students with the best of two worlds: a comfortable home in a neighborhood with a college-town feel, and easy access to everything else going on in a world-class city.

Founded in 1890, UChicago distinguished itself with a focus on principles of inquiry and free expression without prejudice towards gender or identity from its earliest days. William Rainey Harper, UChicago’s first president, incorporated into UChicago’s early charter a commitment to gender equality in both undergraduate and graduate education and, remarkably, considering the initial intention to found a Baptist institution, to an atmosphere of nonsectarianism. This commitment to an accepting environment and equal opportunity distinguished the University in its early years and holds firm today.