Mission and Statement of Purpose
Yale’s residential colleges allow students to experience the cohesiveness and intimacy of a small school while enjoying the cultural and scholarly resources of a large university (https://yalecollege.yale.edu/residential-colleges).
Yale’s residential college system, established ninety years ago, is the cornerstone of the Yale College mission to bring together and educate exceptionally promising students of all backgrounds. Each community contained within the fourteen residential colleges represents Yale in microcosm, offering students a sense of intimate social and intellectual connection, as well as a space of civic and moral responsibility.
The very texture of daily life in the undergraduate community is fundamental to the university’s education mission. The free-flowing interaction with contemporaries similar to oneself in talent and energy but different in background and outlook has a powerful capacity to open and enliven the mind.
The colleges are also dynamic spaces allowing for organic creative, intellectual, group and personal leadership development. They feature a wide range of activities and opportunities, from the college student councils to special academic and cultural programs such as Senior Mellon Forum presentations; College Teas; Creative and Performing Arts events, intramural athletic competitions, and beyond.
The Heads, typically members of the senior faculty drawn from across the university, preside over the colleges and actively shape the social and intellectual life of the communities. The residential college Deans serve as chief academic officers overseeing students’ academic progress during their time at Yale. Both Heads and Deans live in the College and advise students. Together with the Associate Heads, college staff, fellows, graduate affiliates, and enthusiastic alumni, they work to make the residential colleges warm and supportive communities in which students may explore and experience all that Yale University and the city of New Haven have to offer.