Yale University

Yale University comprises three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the professional schools. In addition, Yale encompasses a wide array of centers and programs, libraries, museums, and administrative support offices. Approximately 11,250 students attend Yale.

Welcome to Yale. We invite you to visit us at any time—in person or through this site—and explore the life of our campus.

Some people think of Yale primarily as an undergraduate school, Yale College. Yale is indeed well known for the strength of its college, where its 5,200 students learn to lead and serve not only through a strong academic curriculum but also by participation in a host of extracurricular activities, from athletics to community service. Yale students are famous for forming and shaping their own clubs and organizations. More than 240 student organizations now exist, some over a century old and others formed just this year.

Yale is also a major research university. Led by a distinguished faculty, it carries on its education and research on the graduate level in eleven graduate and professional schools: the graduate school of arts and sciences, divinity, forestry & environmental studies, law, management, medicine, nursing, and four schools of the arts: architecture, art, drama, and music. The University is home to one of the world’s great libraries and three outstanding public museums and galleries—Peabody Museum of Natural History, the University Art Gallery, and the Center for British Art—that help to enrich the cultural climate of the university and city.

Founded in 1701, Yale is a university with honored traditions. In the diversity of its students, its global outlook, and its outstanding research, it is also a university of compelling change. We welcome your interest in the University and in our community. Please browse Yale's Web pages for information on all aspects of the University and the activities of its students, faculty, and staff. If you are in the New Haven area, our Visitor Center offers daily tours of the campus and its architecture and facilities.

You are invited to view an illustrated timeline of Yale’s history in addition to reading the brief overview on this page.

Yale’s roots can be traced back to the 1640s, when colonial clergymen led an effort to establish a college in New Haven to preserve the tradition of European liberal education in the New World. This vision was fulfilled in 1701, when the charter was granted for a school “wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts and Sciences [and] through the blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick employment both in Church and Civil State.” In 1718 the school was renamed “Yale College” in gratitude to the Welsh merchant Elihu Yale, who had donated the proceeds from the sale of nine bales of goods together with 417 books and a portrait of King George I.
Yale Charter.

Yale Charter

Yale College survived the American Revolutionary War (1776–1781) intact and, by the end of its first hundred years, had grown rapidly. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought the establishment of the graduate and professional schools that would make Yale a true university. The Yale School of Medicine was chartered in 1810, followed by the Divinity School in 1822, the Law School in 1824, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847 (which, in 1861, awarded the first Ph.D. in the United States), followed by the schools of Art in 1869, Music in 1894, Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1900, Nursing in 1923, Drama in 1955, Architecture in 1972, and Management in 1974.

International students have made their way to Yale since the 1830s, when the first Latin American student enrolled. The first Chinese citizen to earn a degree at a Western college or university came to Yale in 1850. Today, international students make up nearly 9 percent of the undergraduate student body, and 16 percent of all students at the University. Yale’s distinguished faculty includes many who have been trained or educated abroad and many whose fields of research have a global emphasis; and international studies and exchanges play an increasingly important role in the Yale College curriculum. The University began admitting women students at the graduate level in 1869, and as undergraduates in 1969.

Yale College was transformed, beginning in the early 1930s, by the establishment of residential colleges. Taking medieval English universities such as Oxford and Cambridge as its model, this distinctive system divides the undergraduate population into twelve separate communities of approximately 450 members each, thereby enabling Yale to offer its students both the intimacy of a small college environment and the vast resources of a major research university. Each college surrounds a courtyard and occupies up to a full city block, providing a congenial community where residents live, eat, socialize, and pursue a variety of academic and extracurricular activities. Each college has a master and dean, as well as a number of resident faculty members known as fellows, and each has its own dining hall, library, seminar rooms, recreation lounges, and other facilities.

Today, Yale has matured into one of the world’s great universities. Its 11,000 students come from all fifty American states and from 108 countries. The 3,200-member faculty is a richly diverse group of men and women who are leaders in their respective fields. The central campus now covers 310 acres (125 hectares) stretching from the School of Nursing in downtown New Haven to tree-shaded residential neighborhoods around the Divinity School. Yale’s 260 buildings include contributions from distinguished architects of every period in its history. Styles range from New England Colonial to High Victorian Gothic, from Moorish Revival to contemporary. Yale’s buildings, towers, lawns, courtyards, walkways, gates, and arches comprise what one architecture critic has called “the most beautiful urban campus in America.” The University also maintains over 600 acres (243 hectares) of athletic fields and natural preserves just a short bus ride from the center of town.

Throughout Yale’s history, members of the Yale community—alumni, faculty, students, and staff—have made contributions in all areas of society. As Yale looks toward the future, our aspirations require that we continue to build on the accomplishments of recent years as we strengthen and broaden Yale’s capacity to contribute not only to the nation but also to the world.

Yale Tomorrow, a five-year, $3.5 billion campaign to build the future of our University, will provide the financial resources to meet new challenges and support innovations in the curriculum and in research. It is a comprehensive campaign seeking resources for all of the University’s schools and programs, with special emphasis on the sciences, the arts, internationalization, and Yale College.

In Preparing for Yale’s Fourth Century, I suggested that Yale is one of the very few universities in the world with the tangible assets, human resources, and internal culture to make possible simultaneous dedication to the preservation, transmission, and advancement of knowledge. In this essay, I identified the commitment to undergraduate education and the emphasis on the education of leaders as two shared values that distinguish Yale from other great research universities. This is not to overlook the important tasks that we undertake in common with all leading research universities.

Not only should Yale strive for excellence in teaching and research, but Yale should also be an environment in which our staff are able to thrive and to make their best contribution to the University’s mission. Our Statement of Values reflects our aspirations in this arena, and efforts to improve best practices and worklife support these values.

To maintain our preeminence in the 21st century, we must complete the transition from a local to regional to national to international university. In the 18th century, three-quarters of Yale students came from Connecticut. In the 19th century, three-quarters came from New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In the 20th century, we became a truly national university. The emerging framework for this work is described in The Internationalization of Yale.

We are, as a community, committed to strengthening Yale as a great place to study, teach, research, and work. I invite you to explore these pages and join this endeavor.

• Feb 05

  

   

  Category: Career

  One of the things people need to remember when thinking about looking for a job, is that all kinds of comapnies have positions for all kinds of industries. For example, I am a marketing major. When I began to search for a job, I didn't simply look at marketing firms. Compani...

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• Feb 04

  

   

  Category: Career

  Hopefully we can get some more Yale Grads in here soon, but for those of you that get the chance to read this, I'm in sales in eastern Tennessee and really looking to venture into a much larger city (Chicago, New York, etc.). I work with Pharmaceuticals and really need some...

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