Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut.

Founded in 1701 as
the "Collegiate School" by a group of Congregationalist ministers and chartered by the Colony of Connecticut,
the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in theUnited States.
Yale is organized into twelve constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Graduate School of
Arts & Sciences, and ten professional schools. 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, including theYale Bowl, a campus
in West Haven, Connecticut, and forest and nature preserves throughout New England.
Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 13
living billionaires,[10] and many foreign heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of
Congress and many high-level U.S. diplomats, including former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and
current Secretary of State John Kerry. Fifty-two Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the University as
students, faculty, or staff, and 230 Rhodes Scholars (the second most in the United States) graduated from the
University.[11]
Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School," passed by the General Court of
the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701, while meeting in New Haven. The Act was an effort to create an
institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of
ten Congregationalist ministers: Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel
Mather, James Noyes, James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson,Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb and Timothy
Woodbridge, all alumni of Harvard, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell in Branford, Connecticut, to
pool their books to form the school's library.[12] The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as "The
Founders".
Originally known as the "Collegiate School," the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham
Pierson,[13] in Killingworth (now Clinton). The school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1716 the
college moved to New Haven, Connecticut.
The Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted
more courses in modern languages, mathematics, and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was
no national curriculum for colleges and universities in the United States.
Yale expanded gradually, establishing the Yale School of Medicine (1810), Yale Divinity School (1822), Yale
Law School (1843), Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1847), the Sheffield Scientific School (1847),
[28]
and the Yale School of Fine Arts (1869). In 1887, as the college continued to grow under the presidency
of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed Yale University. The university would later add the Yale
School of Music(1894), the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (founded by Gifford Pinchot in
1901), the Yale School of Public Health (1915), the Yale School of Nursing (1923), the Yale School of
Drama (1955), the Yale Physician Associate Program (1973), and the Yale School of Management(1976). It
would also reorganize its relationship with the Sheffield Scientific School.
Between 1925 and 1940, philanthropic foundations, especially ones connected with the Rockefellers,
contributed about $7 million to support the Yale Institute of Human Relations and the affiliated Yerkes
Laboratories of Primate Biology. The money went toward behavioral science research, which was supported
by foundation officers who aimed to "improve mankind" under an informal, loosely defined human engineering
effort
Women studied at Yale University as early as 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of
Arts and Sciences.[36]
In 2006, Yale and Peking University (PKU) established a Joint Undergraduate Program in Beijing, an exchange
program allowing Yale students to spend a semester living and studying with PKU honor students.[44] In July
2012, the Peking University-Yale University Program ended due to weak participation.[44]

Yale's central campus in downtown New Haven covers 260 acres (1.1 km2). An additional 500 acres (2.0 km2)
includes the Yale golf course and nature preserves in rural Connecticut and Horse Island.[73]
Yale is noted for its largely Collegiate Gothic campus. Many of Yale's buildings were constructed in
the Collegiate Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931.
Notable nonresidential campus buildings and landmarks include Battell Chapel, Beinecke Rare Book
Library, Harkness Tower, Ingalls Rink, Kline Biology Tower, Osborne Memorial Laboratories, Payne Whitney
Gymnasium, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Sterling Hall of Medicine, Sterling Law Buildings, Sterling
Memorial Library, Woolsey Hall, Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and Yale Art &
Architecture Building.