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Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third oldest American collegiate institution and is well accepted as one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Yale is well known for everything from its research in developing the latest AIDS cocktail drugs to having bestowed degrees on the past three U.S. presidents. With over 11 billion dollars in endowment, Yale has the second largest academic endowment of any university in the United States.
Yale is also one of the eight members of the Ivy League. The rivalry between Yale and fellow Ivy League school Harvard is long and storied; from academics to rowing to college football, their historic rivalry is similar to that of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK. Yale is the second most prolific university in terms of Rhodes Scholar graduates in the country.
Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School" passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut and dated October 9, 1701, which was furthered by a meeting in Branford, Connecticut by a group of ten Congregationalist ministers who pooled their books to form the school's first library. The school itself opened in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, but moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1716, where it remains to this day.
The college's original name was the Collegiate School; it was renamed Yale after an early benefactor, Elihu Yale. In the early 20th century, Yale merged with the Sheffield Scientific School.
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