NEW HAVEN, Conn., June 8 (UPI) -- Yale will jack up its undergraduate enrollment by 15 percent by building two new residential colleges, the university president says.
The colleges are expected to open in 2013, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The expansion will allow the Ivy League school to increase enrollment to about 6,000, Yale President Richard Levin said in a letter to alumni, faculty, students and staff.
Yale now admits fewer than 10 percent of the more than 20,000 undergraduates who apply each year.
"We have a long queue of highly qualified applicants who collectively would allow Yale to make an even greater contribution to society if more could be educated here," Levin said. "In addition, since the late 1970s, when the undergraduate population ceased to grow, Yale is larger in virtually every dimension: faculty, staff, library and museum resources and physical presence."
The newspaper reported Yale last increased its enrollment significantly in 1969, when the school began admitting women.
The new colleges will be situated to help connect the school's science facilities to the rest of the campus, Levin said.
"The new colleges have the potential of making the whole campus seem smaller, more effectively linking Science Hill with the historic center," his wrote.
