Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (usually referred to as Rutgers University), is the largest institution for higher education in the state of New Jersey.  It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766 and is the eighth-oldest college in the United States. Rutgers was originally a private university affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church and admitted only male students, but evolved into and is presently a nonsectarian, coeducational public research university that makes no religious demands of its students. Rutgers is one of only two colonial colleges that later became public universities. (The other is the College of William and Mary.)

 

Rutgers was among the first American institutions to engage in intercollegiate athletics, and participated in a small circle of schools that included Yale University, Columbia University and long-time rival, Princeton University (then called The College of New Jersey). The four schools met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan on 19 October 1873 to establish a set of rules governing their intercollegiate competition, and particularly to codify the new game of football. Though invited, Harvard chose not to attend.  In the early years of intercollegiate athletics, the circle of schools that participated in these athletic events were located solely in the American Northeast. However, by the turn of the century, colleges and universities across the United States began to participate.