Evelyn Schulte, age 12, of Dayton, Ohio, for her question:

WHAT IS THE OLDEST COLLEGE IN THE UNITED STATES?

Harvard University is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It was founded just 16 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, in 1636.

Today the school is one of the richest private universities in the world. The main campus is in Cambridge, Mass., but there are several schools in Boston. The school has an endowment of over $1 billion.

It was called Harvard College when it was founded at Newtowne on October 2 8, 1636. The town was later renamed Cambridge after England's Cambridge University. The school was named after John Harvard, a Puritan minister who gave the college a collection of over 400 books and left half of his estate to the school when he died in 1638. Harvard's first class graduated in 1642.