Yale University

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut. The university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Originally chartered as the Collegiate School, the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. In 1718, the College was renamed Yale College to honor a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first U.S. institution to award the Ph.D.[5] Yale became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. Yale College was transformed, beginning in the 1930s, through the establishment of residential colleges. Yale comprises 15 academic schools with 12 residential colleges. Its central campus is in downtown New Haven, and additional lands in rural Connecticut and Horse Island hold the Yale golf course and nature preserves. The university's assets include an endowment valued at $20.80 billion as of 2013, the second-largest of any academic institution in the world.Almost all tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Yale's library system holds a total of about 13 million volumes,[9] the second-largest of any academic library in country.[10] Its students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League.Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and many foreign heads of state. Moreover, 51 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the University as students, faculty, or staff.