5,350 Yale College, 2,500 graduate, 3,500 professional
Sports teams
Bulldogs
Mascot
Handsome Dan
This article is about a university. For other uses of "Yale", see Yale (disambiguation).
Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third oldest American collegiate institution and one of the most prestigious and well-known in the world. The University has graduated numerous Nobel prize winners and U.S. Presidents. Its $11 billion academic endowment is the second largest of any university in the world, after Harvard University.
Yale is one of the eight members of the Ivy League. The rivalry between Yale and fellow Ivy League school Harvard is long and storied; from academics to rowing to college football, their historic rivalry is similar to that of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK (see Oxbridge rivalry). Yale is the second most prolific university in terms of Rhodes Scholar graduates in the country (after Harvard).
The college was originally known as the Collegiate School; it adopted the name Yale after an early benefactor, Elihu Yale had bestowed a generous gift of nine bales of goods, 417 books, and a portrait of King George I. Yale expanded gradually, establishing the Medical School (1810), Divinity School (1822), Law School (1843), Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1847), the School of Fine Arts (1869), and School of Music (1894). In the early 20th century, Yale merged with the Sheffield Scientific School.
Ezra Stiles College - named for the Rev. Ezra Stiles and generally called simply "Stiles," despite an early-1990s crusade by then-master Traugott Lawler to preserve the use of the full name in everyday speech.
Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School" passed by the General Court of the 