Ivy League

The Ivy League is a group of eight universities in the northeastern United States. They are among the oldest (seven were founded during America's colonial era) and most respected universities in the United States. The term has connotations of academic excellence as well as a certain amount of elitism. The Ivy League schools are sometimes affectionately referred to as "The Ancient Eight."

The members of the Ivy League are:

• Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, founded 1764
• Columbia University, in New York, New York, founded 1754 as King's College
• Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, founded 1865
• Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, founded 1769
• Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, college founded 1636, university founded 1780
• Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey, founded in 1746 as College of New Jersey
• University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded 1749
• Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, founded 1701

The Ivy League universities are private, though Cornell University has four state-supported academic departments. It is also the only land-grant university in the Ivy League.

Terminology

The term Ivy League was first coined informally to refer to these schools, who compete in both scholastics and sports, but it also refers to the formal association of these schools in NCAA Division I athletic competition. (In some sports, notably baseball and tennis, the Ivy League teams also compete against "Army" and "Navy," i.e. the United States Military Academy and the United States Naval Academy.)

The term "Ivy League" refers strictly to the original eight schools. However, the term Ivy Plus is sometimes used to refer to the eight plus Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University for purposes of alumni associations and university gatherings; however, these two schools are not part of the Ivy League.

History

As an informal football league the Ivy League dates from 1900 when Yale took the conference championship with a 5-0 record. For many years Army and Navy were considered members, but dropped out shortly before formal organization.

Caswell Adams of the New York Tribune made a passing comment about the schools in 1937, referring to the ivy growing on their walls. Stanley Woodward, a fellow sportswriter, coined the phrase in a column soon thereafter, informally dubbing the eight competitive universities the Ivy League, in advance of any formal sports league involving the schools.

In 1945 the athletic directors of the schools signed the first Ivy Group Agreement, which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for the football teams.

In 1954, the date generally accepted as the birth of the Ivy League, the agreement was extended to all sports.

An apocryphal etymology attributes the name to the Roman numerals for four (IV), incorrectly asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members.

Reputation

In the Ivy League, Harvard, Yale and Princeton are generally among the most selective and most widely recognized undergraduate programs in the United States. Other Ivy universities such as the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and Cornell are famous for their graduate and professional degree programs. (Columbia, for example, has a highly regarded Journalism School and Penn's Wharton School of Business, Nursing School, and Medical School top many rankings.)

Cooperation

Seven of the eight schools (excluding Harvard) participate in the BorrowDirect interlibrary-loan program, making a total of 40 million items available to participants, although the ILL program is not affiliated with the formal Ivy arrangement. (Harvard holds another 15 million items in its collection.)

Competition

Harvard and Yale are traditional rivals. Princeton and Penn are mainly basketball rivals.

Endowments

The Ivy League schools are among the wealthiest private universities the U.S., a status commensurate with their ages and long-standing relationships with the highest echelons of American society. All of the Ivy League schools have endowments over $1 billion.[1] Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Dartmouth, Cornell and Columbia have multi-billion dollar endowments.

Harvard, with $19.3 billion in the bank, is the wealthiest university in the world.[2] Harvard owns nearly 19 million square feet of property in the Boston area.[3]

Columbia is notably the second largest landowner in New York City, which has some of the highest property values in the world.

See Also

• Ivy Plus
• Oxbridge
• Seven Sisters Schools
• Russell Group of Universities
• Indian Institutes of Technology

External Link

• Ivy League Sports Official Website