Back to School, 2016

(Yale photos, Michael Morand)

When September comes, Yale wakes up and is reborn. Another class of new Yalies, this time the Class of 2020, arrives on campus and partakes in campus traditions during a week of orientation, ceremony and introductions to heads of college, deans and online Blue Books. A familiar wide, white banner at Phelps Gate welcomed this new class, the last class that will number less than 1,360. 

With the completion of the two new residential colleges, the Class of '21 will include over 1,600 new students. Yale's undergraduate population will year by year begin to rise toward 6,000 (approaching the size of peer schools Harvard, Penn, Stanford, and Cornell).

But that's next year. This year, students returned to see the reopening of the refurbished rare-books Beinecke Library (above) and were reminded that residential-college rivalries are as intense as ever. 

The new Class of '20 includes those from about 1,000 different high schools from around the world--including Westchester high schools like Mamaroneck, Rye Country Day, Hastings, and Scarsdale.