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Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. It is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.

Yale was established as the Collegiate School in 1701 by Congregationalist clergy of the Connecticut Colony. Originally focused on theology and sacred languages, the school's curriculum expanded to include humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded to include graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. It is one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities. Yale's faculty and student populations grew rapidly after 1890 due to the expansion of the physical campus and its scientific research programs.

Yale is organized into fifteen constituent schools, including the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Yale Law School. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of 2025, Yale's endowment was valued at $44.1 billion, making it the second-largest among all educational institutions and the second-largest among private universities. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Student athletes compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.

As of October 2025, 72 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields medalists, 4 Abel Prize laureates, and 3 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. Yale alumni include 5 U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court justices, 31 living billionaires, 54 college founders and presidents, as well as numerous heads of state, cabinet members, and governors. The university’s community also includes hundreds of members of Congress, U.S. diplomats, 99 MacArthur Fellows, 263 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 81 Gates Cambridge Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows, and 9 Mitchell Scholars. Current Yale faculty include 73 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 200 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The university is also one of the largest producers of Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy winners. Over 200 Yale alumni have competed in the Olympic games and have won over 110 medals (including 55 gold).

History

Origins

Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School", a would-be charter passed in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701. The act aimed to establish an institution for the education of ministers and lay leaders. Soon after, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather (nephew of Increase Mather), the Rev. James Noyes II (son of James Noyes), James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, and Timothy Woodbridge, all Harvard alumni, met in the study of the Reverend Samuel Russell, in Branford, to donate books to form the school's library. The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as the "Founders".

Known from its origin as the "Collegiate School", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, who is considered Yale's first president. Pierson lived in Killingworth. In 1702, Nathaniel Chauncey became the first person to attain a degree, having it conferred solely by oral examination by Pierson and Russell. The school moved to Saybrook in 1707 after Pierson's death, when the first treasurer of Yale, Nathaniel Lynde, donated land and a building. Although the deed required the school to remain in Saybrook, the trustees voted in 1716 to move it to New Haven, which had outbid several other communities for the right to host it.

Meanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the Collegiate School in the hope it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way Harvard had not. The Reverend Jason Haven, minister at the First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, had been considered for the presidency on account of his orthodox theology and "Neatness dignity and purity of Style [which] surpass those of all that have been mentioned", but was passed over due to his "very Valetudinary and infirm State of Health".

Naming and development

In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the Boston-born businessman Elihu Yale to ask for money to construct a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune in Madras while working for the East India Company as the first president of Fort St. George, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum of money. Cotton Mather suggested the school change its name to "Yale College".

Administration and organization

Leadership

The President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, or board of trustees, is the governing body of the university and consists of thirteen standing committees with separate responsibilities outlined in the by-laws. The corporation has 19 members: three ex officio members, ten successor trustees, and six elected alumni fellows. The university has three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the twelve professional schools.

The Yale Provost's Office and similar executive positions have launched several women into prominent university executive positions. In 1977, Provost Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed interim president of Yale and later went on to become president of the University of Chicago, being the first woman to hold either position at each respective school. In 1994, Provost Judith Rodin became the first permanent female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, Provost Alison Richard became the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 2003, the dean of the Divinity School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president of Colgate University and later went on to serve as the president of Swarthmore College in 2009, and then the first female chancellor of the University of Denver in 2014. In 2004, Provost Dr. Susan Hockfield became the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, Dean of the Nursing school, Catherine Gilliss, was appointed the dean of Duke University's School of Nursing and vice chancellor for nursing affairs. In 2007, Deputy Provost H. Kim Bottomly was named president of Wellesley College.

Similar examples for men who have served in Yale leadership positions can also be found. In 2004, Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead was appointed as the president of Duke University. In 2008, Provost Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the vice chancellor of the University of Oxford.

Staff and labor unions

Yale University staff are represented by several different unions. Clerical and technical workers are represented by Local 34, and service and maintenance workers are represented by Local 35, both of the same union affiliate UNITE HERE. Unlike similar institutions, Yale has consistently refused to recognize its graduate student union, Local 33 (another affiliate of UNITE HERE), citing claims that the union's elections were undemocratic and how graduate students are not employees; the move to not recognize the union has been criticized by the American Federation of Teachers. In addition, officers of the Yale University Police Department are represented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees. Yale security officers joined the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in late 2010, even though the Yale administration contested the election. In October 2014, after deliberation, Yale security decided to form a new union, the Yale University Security Officers Association, which has since represented the campus security officers.

Campus

Yale's central campus in downtown New Haven covers 260 acres (1.1 km2) and comprises its main, historic campus and a medical campus adjacent to the Yale–New Haven Hospital. In western New Haven, the university holds 500 acres (2.0 km2) of athletic facilities, including the Yale Golf Course. In 2008, Yale purchased the 17-building, 136-acre (0.55 km2) former Bayer HealthCare complex in West Haven, Connecticut, the buildings of which are now used as laboratory and research space. Yale also owns seven forests in Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire—the largest of which is the 7,840-acre (31.7 km2) Yale-Myers Forest in Connecticut's Quiet Corner—and nature preserves including Horse Island.

Yale is noted for its largely Collegiate Gothic campus as well as several iconic modern buildings commonly discussed in architectural history survey courses: Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery and Center for British Art, Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, and Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building. Yale also owns and has restored many noteworthy 19th-century mansions along Hillhouse Avenue, which was considered the most beautiful street in America by Charles Dickens when he visited the United States in the 1840s. In 2011, Travel + Leisure listed the Yale campus as one of the most beautiful in the United States. Condé Nast also ranked it as one of the most beautiful in 2025.

Many of Yale's buildings were constructed in the Collegiate Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931, financed largely by Edward S. Harkness, including the Yale Drama School. Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings portray contemporary college personalities, such as a writer, an athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a student who has fallen asleep while reading. Similarly, the decorative friezes on the buildings depict contemporary scenes, like a policemen chasing a robber and arresting a prostitute (on the wall of the Law School), or a student relaxing with a mug of beer and a cigarette. The architect, James Gamble Rogers, faux-aged these buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages. In fact, the buildings merely simulate Middle Ages architecture, for though they appear to be constructed of solid stone blocks in the authentic manner, most actually have steel framing as was commonly used in 1930. One exception is Harkness Tower, 216 feet (66 m) tall, which was originally a free-standing stone structure. It was reinforced in 1964 to allow the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon.

Academics

Admissions

Undergraduate admission to Yale College is considered "most selective" by U.S. News. In 2022, Yale accepted 2,234 students to the Class of 2026 out of 50,015 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 4.46%. In 2026, the admission rate for the class of 2030 fell to 4.2% from 4.59% the prior year, with 2,328 students accepted out of a pool of 54,919 applicants (the second largest in Yale's history following the class of 2028). 98% of students graduate within six years. Yale's most selective graduate schools are: the Law School (4%), School of Medicine (5%), Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (5.7% - only for PhD admissions), School of Art (6%), School of Music (10%), School of Architecture (15%), and Divinity School (15%). Yale Divinity School is notable for being the most selective institution for the study of religion in the world.

Through its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants, and the university is need-blind for both domestic and international applicants. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average need-based aid grant for the Class of 2017 was $46,395. 15% of Yale College students are expected to have no parental contribution, and about 50% receive some form of financial aid. About 16% of the Class of 2013 had some form of student loan debt at graduation, with an average debt of $13,000 among borrowers. For 2019, Yale ranked second in enrollment of recipients of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarship (140 scholars).

Half of all Yale undergraduates are women, more than 39% are ethnic minority U.S. citizens (19% are underrepresented minorities), and 10.5% are international students. 55% attended public schools and 45% attended private, religious, or international schools, and 97% of students were in the top 10% of their high school class. Every year, Yale College also admits a small group of non-traditional students through the Eli Whitney Students Program.

Collections

Yale University Library, which holds over 15 million volumes, is the second-largest university collection in the United States after Harvard. The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about 4 million volumes, and other holdings are dispersed at subject and location libraries. For the 2022 fiscal year, the university reported 9,144,904 physical library holdings and 2,784,465 holdings in their digital/electronic collection.

Rare books are found in several Yale collections. The Beinecke Rare Book Library has a large collection of rare books and manuscripts. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library includes important historical medical texts, including an impressive collection of rare books, as well as historical medical instruments. The Lewis Walpole Library contains the largest collection of 18th‑century British literary works. The Elizabethan Club, technically a private organization, makes its Elizabethan folios and first editions available to qualified researchers through Yale.

Campus life

Yale is a research university, with the majority of its students in the graduate and professional schools. Undergraduates, or Yale College students, come from a variety of ethnic, national, socioeconomic, and personal backgrounds. Of the 2010–2011 freshman class, 10% are non‑U.S. citizens, while 54% went to public high schools. The median family income of Yale students is $192,600, with 57% of students coming from the top 10% highest-earning families and 16% from the bottom 60%.

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