Yale University

**Yale University** is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. It is in the Ivy League and considered by many people to be one of the best universities in the world. Yale is the third oldest university in the United States.

Yale was founded in 1701 in a town near New Haven by a group of church ministers. At first it was called "The Collegiate School" and was created to teach male church ministers in Connecticut. When Elihu Yale, a businessman with the East India Company, gave the school money and books in 1718, the school changed its name to Yale College. It moved into the center of New Haven in the same year. About fifty years later, the school began to teach other subjects like science and history. As the school became more liberal, it became one of the first American schools where extracurricular student groups were created, especially singing groups, sports teams, and student publications like the Yale Daily News.

In the beginning, Yale only taught undergraduate students. Over time, it created graduate schools for medicine, nursing, environmental science, law, music, drama, business, and other professions. In 1869, Yale became the first school in the United States to offer a PhD.  Because it had grown to have many types of schools, degrees, and courses, Yale changed its name to Yale University in 1887. The undergraduate college began to accept women as students in 1969.

Yale has one of the largest libraries in the United States, with 19 library buildings and over 15 million books. The school's main library building, Sterling Memorial Library, is built to look like a cathedral. The Beinecke Library has one of the world's largest collections of rare books and old manuscripts.

The school's campus is known for its Gothic Revival architecture, which was built to look like older English universities like Oxford and Cambridge. On its main campus, Yale has two art museums, a natural history museum, and many theaters. The university also has a golf course near campus and owns five forests in New England.

Fifty-two Nobel Prize winners have been students or professors at Yale, and five U.S. presidents have graduated from Yale, including George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Other famous alumni include politicians Hilary Clinton and John Kerry, actors Meryl Streep and Edward Norton, inventors Eli Whitney and Samuel Morse, CNN anchors Fareed Zakaria and Anderson Cooper, FedEx founder Fred Smith and Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi, and computer scientist Grace Hopper.

Yale's color is blue, and its mascot is a bulldog named "Handsome Dan." Its sports teams are called the Yale Bulldogs, and they play in the Ivy League.

Peter Salovey, a psychologist, is the current president of Yale.

## Related pages

- Database of (Macro)Molecular Motions at Yale University

## Infobox (university)

- **name**: Yale University
- **image**: Harkness Tower.jpg
- **caption**: Harkness Tower at Yale
- **motto**: (Hebrew language, Hebrew)
Lux et veritas (Latin)
- **mottoeng**: Light and truth
- **established**: 1701
- **type**: Private university, Private
- **endowment**: United States dollar, US $25.4 1000000000 (number), billion
- **president**: Peter Salovey
- **faculty**: 3,619
- **students**: 11,593
- **undergrad**: 5,275
- **postgrad**: 6,318
- **city**: New Haven, Connecticut, New Haven
- **state**: Connecticut
- **country**: United States, U.S.A.
- **campus**: Urban area, Urban,  including Yale Golf Course
- **athletics**: National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA Division I (FCS Football) Ivy League
- **former names**: _Collegiate School_ (1701-1718)
_Yale College_ (1718-1887)
- **colors**: Yale Blue since 1894; prior color, green
- **nickname**: Bulldogs, Elis, Yalies
- **mascot**: Handsome Dan
- **affiliations**: Ivy League
Association of American Universities, AAU
International Alliance of Research Universities, IARU
- **website**: [http://www.yale.edu/ yale.edu]