Like many other elite schools on the list, Yale offers students the opportunity to learn from some extraordinary minds, from Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus 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 promises to "meet the full demonstrated financial need" of students. As a result, the median total debt for undergraduate borrowers who completed their degrees was less than $13,000.
Although the faculty boasts some of the world's top scientific researchers, Yale offers students a traditional liberal arts education. 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 80 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 6:1. At 97%, Yale's six-year graduation rate is among the highest in Money's rankings.
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.
