The school is administered in four divisions—Humanities, Social Sciences, and Biological and Physical Sciences—and its faculty are divided into 52 departments and programs.

The program offered seminars in chemistry and metallurgy, agricultural science, Greek and Latin literature, mathematics, philology, and Arabic.

Following the model of German research universities, the Scientific School faculty established a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1860.

[2] At Commencement in July 1861, the school awarded the first three Ph.D.'s in North America to Eugene Schuyler (philosophy and psychology), Arthur Williams Wright (physics), and James Morris Whiton (classics).

In 1892, seven years after Yale organized as a university, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was officially formed, and Arthur Twining Hadley was appointed dean.

In 1920, the Graduate School was assigned its own governing board, and under Dean Wilbur Lucius Cross (1916-1930), it attracted a large and distinguished scholarly faculty.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, race and gender restrictions on graduate admissions were gradually relaxed.