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About

Saint Peter's University is a private Jesuit university in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was founded as Saint Peter's College in 1872 by the Society of Jesus. The university offers over 60 undergraduate and graduate programs to more than 2,600 undergraduate and 800 graduate students. Its mascot is the Peacock and its sports teams play in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, of which it is a founding member. The university is located on a 30-acre (12 ha) campus just south of Journal Square, and is 2 miles (3 km) west of New York City. Evening and weekend classes are offered in Jersey City, Englewood Cliffs, and South Amboy. In the 2022 edition of US News and World Report, St. Peter’s was ranked 58th in the Regional Colleges-North category. The college was chartered in 1872 and enrolled its first students in 1878 at Warren Street, in Jersey City, on the present site of its former high school section, St. Peter's Preparatory School. In September 1918, the college was closed, along with several other Jesuit colleges and high schools, because of declining enrollment in the face of World War I. Although the war ended only two months after its closing, and despite clamoring from alumni, it took until 1930 to re-open the college. The college was temporarily located on Newark Avenue, before moving in 1936 to its current location on Hudson (now Kennedy) Boulevard, between Montgomery Street and Glenwood Avenue. Unlike other institutions in New Jersey, the school was racially segregated for many years. It was first integrated in 1936, when the college admitted its first black student. The college granted an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree to Martin Luther King Jr., in 1965.