The Fascinating Origins of 10 Famous American Colleges

You might take for granted that big name schools like Yale and Stanford have always been around. While they do have histories that go back hundreds of years, they each had to start somewhere. Often, the stories about how these early colleges came into existence are quite interesting and make for great reading – even if you're a college student somewhere else, as many of these schools played a key role in the formative years of the United States and the cities and states we know today. Here are just a few stories to educate you on how some of the biggest and most well-known colleges in the U.S. got their start.