Yale University is a coeducational, privately endowed, nonsectarian school in New Haven, Connecticut. Chartered in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Only Harvard University and the College of William and Mary are older.
Yale graduates have always played a major role in American life. Many graduates have become leaders in government, business and industry, the arts, and community services. The university’s website at https://www.yale.edu/ presents information about the school.
The Yale campus.
Connecticut Hall, built in 1752, is the oldest building. This red brick building is the only structure left on the campus from colonial days. Famous American architects have designed many newer buildings at Yale, including a science center.
Most first-year students live on the Old Campus, the site of the original school. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors live in 14 residential colleges. Each college houses a few hundred students and some faculty members. Each college has its own library, common rooms, and dining hall. The colleges compete with each other in several sports. The residence plan started in 1933 through the gifts of Edward S. Harkness, a Yale graduate.
The Yale library ranks as one of the finest academic libraries in the world. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was dedicated in 1963. This facility is one of the largest buildings in the world devoted to rare books and manuscripts.
Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History is one of the oldest university-related museums in the United States. It has many world-famous fossil exhibits. The Yale University Art Gallery is the oldest university art museum in the nation. The Yale Center for British Art has an excellent collection of British paintings and drawings, and related books and papers.
The Yale Daily News, established in 1878, is the oldest college daily newspaper in the United States. The Yale Literary Magazine, founded in 1836, was the first undergraduate magazine published in the United States.
Educational system.
The undergraduate school at Yale is called Yale College. The university also includes the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and professional schools of architecture, art, divinity, drama, engineering and applied science, forestry and environmental studies, law, management, medicine, music, nursing, and public health.
The Yale Corporation governs the university. The corporation consists of the university president, the governor and lieutenant governor of Connecticut, and 16 other members.
History.
Yale was founded in 1701, when 10 Connecticut clergymen met in the village of Branford and made a gift of books to found a college. Later that year, the General Assembly of Connecticut approved a charter for the Collegiate School. From 1702 to 1707, classes met in the home of Rector Abraham Pierson at Killingworth (now Clinton).
Classes were held in Milford, and then Saybrook, before the school moved to New Haven in 1716. Two years later, the school’s only college building was still unfinished due to a lack of funds. Elihu Yale, a retired merchant in London, gave money to the school in 1718 (see Yale, Elihu). Yale is sometimes called Old Eli. The same year, the school was renamed in honor of Yale. The undergraduate school at Yale University was open only to men until 1969.
