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4 Residential colleges
Yale has a system of 12 residential colleges, instituted in the early 1930s through a grant by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness, who admired the college system at Oxford and Cambridge. Undergraduate students are accepted by the university as a whole, and assigned to residential colleges at random. (A special dispensation, though, is made for "legacy" students or students with siblings currently enrolled in Yale College; they may request to be placed in the same college or to be placed in a different college.) Each college has a carefully constructed support structure for students, including a Dean, Master, affiliated faculty, and resident Fellows. Each college also features distinctive architecture, secluded courtyards, and rich facilities ranging from libraries to squash courts to darkrooms. While each college at Yale offers its own seminars, social events, and Master's Teas with luminaries from the outside world, Yale students also take part in academic and social programs across the university, and all of Yale's 2,000 courses are open to undergraduates from any college.
Residential colleges are named for important figures or places in university history or notable alumni; they are deliberately not named for benefactors.
Residential Colleges of Yale University (official list):
- Berkeley College - named for the Rt. Rev. George Berkeley (though pronounced BERK-lee) (1685-1753), early funder of Yale.
- Branford College [1] - named for Branford, Connecticut, where Yale was briefly located.
- Calhoun College - named for John C. Calhoun, vice-president of the United States.
- Davenport College - named for Rev. John Davenport (occasionally called "D'port"), the founder of New Haven
- Ezra Stiles College - named for the Rev. Ezra Stiles, a president of Yale, 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. Its buildings were designed by Eero Saarinen.
- Jonathan Edwards College - named for theologian and Yale president Jonathan Edwards (generally called "J.E.").
- Morse College - named for Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse Code. Also designed by Eero Saarinen.
- Pierson College - named for Yale's first rector, Abraham Pierson.
- Saybrook College [2] - named for Old Saybrook, Connecticut, the town in which Yale was founded.
- Silliman College - named for noted scientist and Yale professor Benjamin Silliman.
- Timothy Dwight College - named for the two Yale presidents of that name, Timothy Dwight IV and Timothy Dwight V (usually called "T.D.").
- Trumbull College - named for Jonathan Trumbull, governor of Connecticut.
5 Other campus buildings
Beinecke Rare Book Library
