<p>The residential college system means that minorities (ethnic, cultural, religious, athletes, math students, different majors, ages, class years, geographical or however you measure it) actually interact with each other. Yale has similar percentages as every other elite school, but the difference is that at Yale, they actually interact with each other. The college system, which breaks students down into 12 smaller, intimate but randomly selected groups of 100 students per year, means everyone eats together in the dining halls without forming cliques. Also, classes at Yale are smaller than they are at any of the other top universities, and Yale’s campus is the most compact in the country in terms of how close the undergrad dorms are to one another (e.g., a 2 minute walk to get to anyone else’s dorm at Yale, versus a 15 minute walk at Harvard). That means people just get to know each other better.</p>