Like many other elite schools on the list, Yale offers students the opportunity to learn from some of the country’s leading thinkers, from historian and National Book Award winner Ned Blackhawk to theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan, whom Time magazine named one list of the 100 most influential people of 2024.
It’s no surprise that Yale is one of the most selective schools in the country. But it's also one of the most generous: Yale is part of a small group of colleges that promises to meet the full demonstrated financial need of admitted students. Students from families earning up to $100,000 can attend for free, while students from families earning up to $200,000 get a full-tuition scholarship. As a result, the median total debt for undergraduate borrowers who completed their degrees was less than $13,000.
Popular majors include political science, history and psychology, as well as computer science and economics. However, that barely scrapes the surface of what the university has to offer: Students can choose from more than 80 undergraduate majors, and Yale offers roughly 2,000 courses every year. In fact, Yale calculates that it would take more than 200 years as a full-time student to exhaust the university’s catalog of courses.
No matter the major, Yale emphasizes three skill areas: writing, quantitative reasoning and foreign language. Class sizes are small, and the student-faculty ratio is 5:1. At roughly 97%, Yale's six-year graduation rate is among the highest on Money's Best Colleges list.
Much of Yalies' social life revolves around the residential college they are assigned, and live in, starting their first year. But students also form friendships across colleges through activities such as a cappella choir, sports, campus publications, volunteer groups and — for a select group — senior-year secret societies, such as the infamous Skull and Bones.
