Yale University is located in New
Haven, Connecticut, a historic, small New England city
about two hours north of New York. A total of
approximately 11,400 students attend Yale University's
three component parts – Yale College (which is the
undergraduate institution), the Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences, and ten professional schools (the Schools
of Art, Architecture, Drama, Engineering, Music,
Forestry and Environmental Studies, Law, Management,
Medicine, and Nursing, and the Divinity School).
Today, most Americans probably
think of Yale in terms of undergraduate experience.
However, Yale University is also a highly esteemed
research university, having produced Nobel laureates in
economics, physics, chemistry, and medicine. Yale
University is also home to several world-renowned art
collections and libraries.
Yale University has a long
tradition of public service, with faculty, officers, and
alumni who have served (and continue to serve) in
government, education, business, and non-profit
ventures. Among its most famous alumni are five U.S.
presidents: George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Bill
Clinton, Gerald Ford, and William Howard Taft. Other
contemporary leaders in public life who graduated from
Yale are John Kerry, George Pataki, and
Hillary Clinton.
From an undergraduate's point of
view, one of the most striking aspects of the Yale
experience is that it is a residential college, modeled
on the Oxford and Cambridge systems. Incoming students
are assigned to one of twelve residential colleges, each
of which houses about 450 students. Each college is
housed in its own building, which contains dining and
sports and recreation facilities as well as residential
quarters and meeting rooms. The Colleges are staffed by
deans, masters, associated faculty, and fellows, and
offer a rich variety of seminars, lectures, and social
events. This makes for an atmosphere in which students
with widely varying interests and backgrounds are
constantly crossing paths, and gives all students an
exceptional opportunity to expand their educational and
social horizons during their college years.
