31 Most Beautiful College Campuses in the U.S.

Did you know...

• The oldest continually operating higher ed institution in the world is the University of al-Qarawiyyin. It was established in Fez, Morocco, in the year 859. That makes it over 1,160 years old! It was founded by a woman, Fatima al-Fihri, and became one of the leading spiritual and educational centers in the Muslim world. It joined the modern Morocco university system in 1963.
• Competition among the country's top universities is so fierce that they are forced to turn away high-performing prospective students. Harvard and Stanford, for instance, turned away a full half of their applicants who scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT. You don't have to worry about them, though. They got in elsewhere.
• The City Montessori School in Lucknow, India, is the school with the largest student body. It has a whopping enrollment of over 55,500 students. Students in China, meanwhile, spend an average of three hours a night on primary and secondary school homework. Head north to Finland and students have on average only three hours of homework a week!
• Boston has the highest concentration of higher ed institutions in the nation. There are over 100 colleges and universities in the Greater Boston area. It also has seven R1 "very high research activity" universities: Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Brandeis, Boston College, Northeastern, and Tufts. This R1 concentration, too, is a record.
• Among industrialized countries, French students are at school the least! A normal school week is 4.5 days, compared to 5 on average. It's common to take a mid-week break by having Wednesdays off. Typically, they are in school 162 days a year, compared to 185 on average for everyone else.