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46 free Yale University trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Yale University trivia for alumni, applicants, Ivy League rivals and anyone who has walked past Harkness Tower and wondered why the stone looks so old. The quiz starts in 1701 with the Collegiate School, the ten ministers who donated books, the moves from Killingworth to Saybrook to New Haven, and the East India Company man whose nine bales of goods bought the naming rights. From there it covers the firsts and the oddities: the first PhD in America, the freshman Hebrew requirement behind the seal, the year women finally arrived as undergraduates, and the acid-splashed Collegiate Gothic buildings designed to look centuries older than they are. Then the campus icons: the marble-walled Beinecke and its Gutenberg Bible, the Peabody's Brontosaurus, the Yale Bowl, Cole Porter's fight song, Handsome Dan the bulldog, the Whiffenpoofs, Skull and Bones and the other tombs. Later rounds turn to Yale Law School, the presidents and justices it produced, the Harvard game that ended 29-29, and the college renamed for Grace Hopper. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Harvard, Ivy League and college trivia quizzes.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Yale University is located in which city?
New Haven
Yale sits in New Haven, Connecticut, where the Collegiate School settled in 1716 after early years in Killingworth and Saybrook.
Q 02In what year was Yale founded, making it the third-oldest US institution of higher education?
1701
Yale was chartered in 1701; only Harvard (1636) and William & Mary (1693) are older among the nine colonial colleges founded before the Revolution.
Q 03Elihu Yale made the fortune behind his 1718 gift working for which trading company?
the East India Company
Elihu Yale grew rich with the East India Company, serving as governor of Fort St George at Madras from 1687 to 1692; his gift of nine bales of goods sold for about £560.
Q 04Which Boston clergyman suggested the school rename itself 'Yale College' after Elihu Yale's gift?
Cotton Mather
Cotton Mather wrote to Elihu Yale in 1718 suggesting the Collegiate School take his name in return for a gift; the Mathers hoped it would stay more orthodox than Harvard.
Q 05Yale awarded the first of what academic degree in the United States, in 1861?
the PhD
Yale conferred the first three PhDs in the United States in 1861, to Eugene Schuyler, Arthur Williams Wright and James Morris Whiton.
Q 06Which Yale graduate serving the British general saved the college when British forces occupied New Haven in 1779?
Edmund Fanning
Edmund Fanning, secretary to the British commander, interceded to spare the college during the July 1779 raid on New Haven; Yale thanked him with an honorary LL.D. in 1803.
Q 07Which 1773 Yale graduate and Revolutionary War spy 'regretted that he had but one life to lose'?
Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale, Yale class of 1773, was hanged by the British as a spy in New York on 22 September 1776, aged 21.
Q 08The Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defence of teaching what?
Latin and Greek
The 1828 Yale Report defended the required study of Latin and Greek against critics who wanted more mathematics, science and modern languages; it shaped US college curricula for decades.
Q 09In what year did Yale first admit women as undergraduates?
1969
Yale College admitted its first women undergraduates in September 1969, after the Yale Corporation voted for coeducation in November 1968; women had entered the graduate school in 1892.
Q 10Yale discussed merging in 1966 with which women's college to bring in coeducation?
Vassar
Vassar, a Seven Sisters college in Poughkeepsie, studied the merger in 1966-67 and then voted to stay independent; both schools went coeducational on their own three years later.
Q 11Alexander v. Yale was the first lawsuit to use which law to argue sexual harassment of students is sex discrimination?
Title IX
The plaintiffs lost in court, but the reasoning reshaped discrimination law and led Yale to set up a Grievance Board and Women's Center.
Q 12In 2017 Yale renamed Calhoun College after which computing pioneer?
Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper, who earned her Yale mathematics PhD in 1934 and became a US Navy rear admiral, replaced John C. Calhoun, the slavery-defending vice president, as the college's namesake in 2017.
Q 13Roughly how large was Yale's endowment in fiscal year 2025?
$44 billion
Q 21The Peabody Museum of Natural History was founded in 1866 at the urging of which palaeontologist, Peabody's nephew?
Othniel Charles Marsh
Othniel Charles Marsh persuaded his uncle George Peabody to give $150,000 to found the museum in 1866; its Great Hall holds a mounted Brontosaurus beneath Zallinger's 110-foot mural The Age of Reptiles.
Q 22Which architect designed Yale's Ingalls Rink and its Morse and Ezra Stiles colleges?
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen designed the whale-shaped Ingalls Rink (1958) and Morse and Ezra Stiles colleges (1962); Louis Kahn did the Art Gallery and Center for British Art, Paul Rudolph the Art & Architecture Building.
Q 23Yale's bulldog Handsome Dan, established in 1889, is believed to have been the first what in America?
Yale's endowment was valued at roughly $44 billion at the close of fiscal 2025, the second-largest of any private university after Harvard's.
Q 14How many Nobel laureates had been affiliated with Yale by October 2025?
72
72 Nobel laureates had been affiliated with Yale as students, faculty or staff by October 2025, alongside five Fields medallists, four Abel laureates and three Turing Award winners.
Q 15How many US presidents count as Yale alumni?
Five
Taft, Ford, George H. W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush; a Yalie was on a major-party ticket in every election from 1972 to 2004.
Q 16Which street of mansions did Dickens reportedly call the most beautiful in America?
Hillhouse Avenue
Dickens is said to have praised Hillhouse Avenue during his 1842 American tour; Yale now owns many of the avenue's 19th-century mansions and uses them as offices.
Q 17Architect James Gamble Rogers made Yale's 1917-31 Collegiate Gothic buildings look old by doing what?
splashing acid on the walls
Rogers aged his Gothic buildings by splashing acid on the walls, breaking and re-leading windows, and leaving niches empty as if statues had been stolen; most hide 1930s steel frames.
Q 18Yale's 216-foot Gothic tower of 1921 was reinforced in 1964 to hold what?
a carillon
The free-standing stone tower, completed in 1921, was given internal steel reinforcement in 1964 to carry the 54-bell Yale Memorial Carillon, expanded from the original ten-bell chime.
Q 19The Beinecke displays one of the 48 surviving copies of which book?
the Gutenberg Bible
The Beinecke holds one of the roughly 48 surviving Gutenberg Bibles, printed at Mainz about 1455; it also owns the undeciphered Voynich manuscript.
Q 20Which Gothic building with a cathedral-like entrance hall is Yale's main library?
Sterling Memorial Library
Sterling Memorial Library, designed by James Gamble Rogers in Collegiate Gothic style, is Yale's main library; its entrance hall is laid out like a cathedral nave, with the circulation desk where an altar would stand.
college mascot
Handsome Dan, bought by student Andrew Graves in 1889, is considered the first live college mascot in America; the original, stuffed, sits in a glass case at Payne Whitney Gymnasium.
Q 24Which future Broadway composer wrote Yale's official fight song, 'Bulldog', as a student?
Cole Porter
Cole Porter, class of 1913, wrote 'Bulldog' in 1911 while an undergraduate; it is Yale's official fight song, though the older 'Boola Boola' (1900) is better known.
Q 25Yale's sunken 1914 football stadium was the prototype for which later stadium?
the Rose Bowl
The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, opened in 1922, was modelled on the Yale Bowl, the sunken elliptical stadium of 1914 built into the earth rather than raised on a frame.
Q 26Which Yale alumnus is known as 'the Father of American Football'?
Walter Camp
Walter Camp, Yale class of 1880, devised the line of scrimmage, the down system and the eleven-man side, earning the title 'Father of American Football'.
Q 27The Harvard Crimson's headline 'Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29' followed The Game of which year?
1968
In the 1968 Game, Harvard scored 16 points in the final 42 seconds to tie 29-29, prompting the Crimson's headline; the rivals marked the 50th anniversary at Fenway Park in 2018.
Q 28Yale students claim to have invented which pastime by tossing empty pie tins from a local bakery?
Frisbee
Yale students say they tossed empty tins from Bridgeport's Frisbie Pie Company across campus, giving the Frisbee its name; the bakery operated from 1871 to 1958.
Q 29Yale's most famous a cappella group, founded in 1909, is called what?
the Whiffenpoofs
The Whiffenpoofs, founded in 1909 and drawn from Yale seniors, are the oldest collegiate a cappella group in the US; they admitted their first woman in 2018.
Q 30In which year was the Yale Daily News first published?
1878
The Yale Daily News first appeared on 28 January 1878, making it the oldest college daily in the US; Garry Trudeau's 'Bull Tales', the precursor of Doonesbury, ran in it from 1968.