[25] The original purpose of Queen's College was to "educate the youth in language, liberal, the divinity, and useful arts and sciences" and for the training of future ministers for the Dutch Reformed Church.

A year after the school was renamed, it received two donations from its namesake: a $200 bell still hanging from the cupola of Old Queen's and a $5,000 bond (equivalent to $135,000 in 2023) which placed the college on sound financial footing.

[41][42] In 2011, there was an attempt by then New Jersey governor Chris Christie and members of the legislature to merge Rutgers–Camden into Rowan University, it ultimately was rejected in part due to several on-campus protests and pushback from Camden faculty, students, and alumni.

[53] In November 2016, Rutgers released research findings that revealed: "an untold history of some of the institution's founders as slave owners and the displacement of the Native Americans who once occupied land that was later transferred to the college.

[60] Since 1785, twenty-one men have served as the institution's president, beginning with Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh, a Dutch Reformed minister who was responsible for establishing the college.

[76] The university is centrally administered from New Brunswick, although chancellors at the Newark and Camden campuses hold significant autonomy for some academic issues.

The Busch Campus is noted as the home of Rutgers' highly ranked Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, as well as the golf course and football stadium.

[82] While its various facilities are spread across several locations statewide, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences is considered a "campus" for certain organizational purposes, such as the appointment of a separate chancellor.

Rutgers' current partners include Atlantic Cape, Brookdale, Mercer, Morris, Camden, and Raritan Valley community colleges.

[97] U.S. News & World Report considers the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers University to be a "more selective" school in terms of the rigor of its admissions processes.

[106] In the 2010–2011 academic year, undergraduate students at Rutgers, through a combination of federal (53.5%), state (23.6%), university (18.1%), and private (4.8%) scholarships, loans, and grants, received $492,260,845 of financial aid.

During the same period, graduate students, through a combination of federal (61.9%), state (1.8%), university (34.5%), and private (1.9%) scholarships, loans, and grants received $182,384,256 of financial aid.

The University also offers multiple opportunities for students to earn while in college through Federal Work Study, on-campus employment, and internships.

[149] It was at Rutgers that Selman Waksman discovered several antibiotics, including actinomycin, clavacin, streptothricin, grisein, neomycin, fradicin, candicidin, candidin, and others.

[150] Rutgers developed water-soluble sustained release polymers, tetraploids, robotic hands, artificial bovine insemination, and the ceramic tiles for the heat shield on the Space Shuttle.

[151] Rutgers is also home to the RCSB Protein Data bank,[152] 'an information portal to Biological Macromolecular Structures' cohosted with the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

[159] Because the area of Rutgers' New Brunswick-Piscataway campus—which is composed of several constituent colleges and professional schools—is sprawled across six municipalities, the individual campuses are connected by an inter-campus bus system.

Several fraternities and sororities maintain houses for their chapters in the area of Union Street (known familiarly as "Frat Row") in New Brunswick, within blocks of Rutgers' College Avenue Campus.

There are over fifty fraternities and sororities on the New Brunswick-Piscataway campus, ranging from traditional to historically African-American, Hispanic, Multicultural, and Asian interest organizations.

[167] The New Brunswick campus of Rutgers University has a chapter of the only active co-ed pre-medical fraternity, Phi Delta Epsilon, as of 2008[update].

[169] It is Rutgers's tradition for students to participate in one of the largest student-run philanthropic events in New Jersey, the Embrace Kids Foundation for children with cancer and blood disorders.

The 'Dancers', along with over 500 volunteers and countless visitors, are entertained by live bands, comedians, prize giveaways, games, sports, a mechanical bull, computer and internet access, various theme hours, and much more.

[180] In 1925, the mascot was changed to Chanticleer, a fighting rooster from the medieval fable Reynard the Fox (Le Roman de Renart) which was used by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales.

[185] Today, the Scarlet Knight costumed mascot appearing at Rutgers football and basketball games and other campus events is called "Sir Henry".

The four schools met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan on October 19, 1873, to establish a set of rules governing their intercollegiate competition, and particularly to codify the new game of football.

[200] Although the Rutgers Scarlet Knights' football team had losing seasons in 2016 and 2015 (won-lost records of 2–10 and 4–8, respectively)[201] it achieved success previously, being invited to the Insight Bowl on December 27, 2005, in which they lost 45 to 40 against Arizona State University.

[207] In November 2012, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, along with Louisville, Connecticut, and Cincinnati left the Big East to form the American Athletic Conference.

1836) served for two decades as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States[212]: p.87  and cast the tie-breaking vote on the bipartisan commission that decided the contested American presidential election in 1876.

Michael R. Douglas, a prominent string theorist and the director of the New High Energy Theory Center and winner of the Sackler Prize in theoretical physics in 2000.

Jerry Fodor, Zenon Pylyshyn, Stephen Stich and Frances Egan were awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in philosophy and cognitive science.