Yale  University is a private Ivy League university located in New Haven,  Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of  Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher  education in the United States. Yale Law School is consistently ranked  as the top law school in the United States while the university is  routinely ranked among the top universities in the world.
Incorporated  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. school to award the Ph.D.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: 12 now exist and two more are planned. Yale  employs over 1,100 faculty to teach and advise about 5,300 undergraduate  and 6,100 graduate and professional students. Almost all tenured  professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are  offered annually.





