Initially founded as a Protestant institution, Yale today welcomes students who bring with them a wide range of faiths and spiritual views. The following data spanning over ninety years is collated from the university archives and the chaplain’s office records. While it provides an unofficial and wide-lens view of how Yale’s religious demographics may have changed, data from certain periods is missing, and methods of collecting data have varied over time, potentially skewing the data and any subsequent analysis. We have highlighted notable shifts in the religious affiliations claimed by Yale College students. For the first few decades in which data were collected, it was gathered from mandatory surveys of the undergraduate population.
The current voluntary survey has a 32% response rate (response rates have varied over time) and should not be considered comprehensive or representative of the entire undergraduate population. When students cite multiple religious identities, we count each student once (i.e., if a student identifies as Methodist and Muslim, they would be counted as 1/2 of a person in each category). This is an imperfect system that is intended to provide a broad sense of the extent of religious diversity on campus.* Yale admissions does not ask students to disclose their religious identity during any part of the admissions process.
*Note: The religious preference information gathered below is self-reported by incoming students, is not comprehensive, and does not represent or document ethnicity.