All eight are in the top 20 for number of sports offered for both men and women among Division I schools. Unlike most Division I athletic conferences, the Ivy League prohibits the granting of athletic scholarships; all scholarships awarded are need-based . In addition, the Ivies have a rigid policy against redshirting, even for medical reasons; an athlete loses a year of eligibility for every year enrolled at an Ivy institution. Additionally, the Ivies prohibit graduate students from participating in intercollegiate athletics, even if they have remaining athletic eligibility.
The only exception to the ban on graduate students is that seniors graduating in 2021 are being allowed to play at their current institutions as graduate students in 2021–22. This was a one-time-only response to the Ivies shutting down most intercollegiate athletics in 2020–21 due to COVID-19. Ivy League teams' non-league games are often against the members of the Patriot League, which have similar academic standards and athletic scholarship policies .
As late as the 1960s many of the Ivy League universities' undergraduate programs remained open only to men, with Cornell the only one to have been coeducational from its founding and Columbia being the last to become coeducational. Before they became coeducational, many of the Ivy schools maintained extensive social ties with nearby Seven Sisters women's colleges, including weekend visits, dances and parties inviting Ivy and Seven Sisters students to mingle. This was the case not only at Barnard College and Radcliffe College, which are adjacent to Columbia and Harvard, but at more distant institutions as well. The movie Animal House includes a satiric version of the formerly common visits by Dartmouth men to Massachusetts to meet Smith and Mount Holyoke women, a drive of more than two hours. As noted by Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra, "The 'Seven Sisters' was the name given to Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Radcliffe, because of their parallel to the Ivy League men's colleges."
Although this group of elite schools is considered to be part of one big league of the elite, there have been plenty of internal rivalries over the years. Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania have been longtime basketball rivals. Cornell and Harvard have been hockey rivals for many years, and Harvard and Penn have beenlong time football rivals. The Yale and Princeton rivalry is considered the country's second-oldest college rivalry behind Lehigh University and Lafayette College. The sports that these colleges play were so popular that some teams began playing games in New York City so spectators could come from far away and watch the games.
The popularity of both the athletes who played and the college team rivalries brought in a good deal of attention to the schools as well as revenue from ticket sales. Mostly, these rivalries are a matter of opinion in terms of which school has the most honor graduates, which schools offer the most prestigious scholarships, and what famous graduates have come from each school. It's likely no surprise that Ivy League-level colleges and universities would borrow a little "ivy" to use in their own names. These similarly prestigious groups of institutions include public schools, small liberal arts colleges, and other lesser-known, top-tier schools. Like Dartmouth, Princeton University emphasizes undergraduate education as their top priority. For liberal arts students or B.S.E. for students of engineering and applied science.
Both programs feature general education requirements, as well as a focus on independent research. The required courses provide Princeton students with a diverse and thorough liberal arts education, a hallmark of the university's undergraduate experience. Undergraduate enrollments range from about 4,500 to about 15,000, larger than most liberal arts colleges and smaller than most state universities. Total enrollment, which includes graduate students, ranges from approximately 6,600 at Dartmouth to over 20,000 at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Penn. Ivy League financial endowments range from Brown's $6.9 billion to Harvard's $53.2 billion, the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world.
The truth is that Ivy League colleges don't always have the highest quality of instruction for undergraduate students. Overall, they tend to be very focused on doing academic research to maintain their position at the forefront of academia. Professors may be less interested in teaching than they are in their personal projects; alternatively, schools may end up hiring tons of adjunct faculty to keep costs down.
You could end up with a better learning experience at a small, highly selective college that exclusively enrolls undergraduate students because the professors are there primarily to teach. The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. Rowing teams from Harvard and Yale met in the first sporting event held between students of two U.S. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, on August 3, 1852. Harvard's team, "The Oneida", won the race and was presented with trophy black walnut oars from then-presidential nominee General Franklin Pierce.
The "Little Ivies," which consist of private liberal arts colleges, offer both academic rigor and selective admissions similar to that of the Ivies and Public Ivies. The institution was founded in 1746, making it the fourth oldest university in the United States. It is a medium-sized institution with around 5,000 undergraduate enrollments, and like Harvard, has an extremely competitive acceptance rate of only 5%. Some of its most popular degrees include computer engineering, public policy analysis, and economics. It is rated #2 of the best colleges in America to study political science and public policy analysis.
Yale, like Harvard, is host to a residential college system that makes the undergraduate experience truly unlike any other. The tight-knit communities that Yale students live in their sophomore through senior year allow students to make connections with both their peers and faculty, as well as live in an environment best suited to their own personal interests and ambitions. All undergraduates attend Yale College, the liberal arts college within the university. Yale has loose general education requirements, although they are less stringent than those at Columbia or Princeton. Yale is celebrated for its exemplary English and creative arts programs, which consistently place near or at the top of national rankings. Writing is an important part of the Yale undergraduate curriculum, with over a hundred introductory writing courses to choose from featuring a broad range of topics.
The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term Ivy League is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools as a group of elite colleges with connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism. Its members are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University.
Each Ivy League college has its own unique accomplishments that make it important. All carry a certain reputation with them, and each school has programs that excel primarily in the medical and law fields, making them some of the most sought-after schools in the world. Their admissions process is very selective, which helps the schools ensure that they only accept the best and brightest. Many famous people have graduated from Ivy League schools, including recent presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. This prestige leads many to believe that these colleges are only for the wealthy and elite.
Often, companies look for Ivy League graduates as potential employees, usually preferred by law firms, medical facilities, and large corporations. It has long been coveted to have earned a degree from an Ivy League school. Today, there are other competitors that some claim to be just as good as their Ivy counterparts. Some of these well-known schools include Duke University, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Vanderbilt, and Georgetown University, to name a few.
The Ivy League schools are still excellent in both academia and in sports, and they have left a legacy of higher education with an exceptional track record and reputation to go along with them. Although the creation of the Ivy League was rooted in athletics, nowadays these schools are known for their academic prestige and famous alumni. All the Ivy League colleges have large endowments that are the product of wealthy alumni contributions over the years. Ivy League schools are often seen as symbols of elitism because they attract students who come from legacies of wealth, but they offer some great financial aid packages to disadvantaged students because of their large endowments.
The Ivy League schools are highly selective, with all schools reporting acceptance rates at or below approximately 10% or less at all of the universities. For the class of 2025, six of the eight schools reported acceptance rates below 6%. Admitted students come from around the world, although those from the Northeastern United States make up a significant proportion of students.
The Ivy League was the first athletic conference to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by shutting down all athletic competition in March 2020, leaving many Spring schedules unfinished. The Fall 2020 schedule was canceled in July, and winter sports were canceled before Thanksgiving. Of the 357 men's basketball teams in Division I, only ten did not play; the Ivy League made up eight of those ten.
By giving up its automatic qualifying bid to March Madness, the Ivy League forfeited at least $280,000 in NCAA basketball funds. As a consequence of the pandemic, an unprecedented number of student athletes in the Ivy League either transferred to other schools, or temporarily unenrolled in hopes of maintaining their eligibility to play post-pandemic. In February 2021 it was reported that Yale declined a multi-million dollar offer from alum Joseph Tsai to create a sequestered "bubble" for the lacrosse team. The league announced in a May 2021 joint statement that "regular athletic competition" would resume "across all sports" in fall 2021. The influence of these institutions on the founding of other colleges and universities is notable. This included the Southern public college movement which blossomed in the decades surrounding the turn of the 19th century when Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia established what became the flagship universities of their respective states.
In 1801, a majority of the first board of trustees for what became the University of South Carolina were Princeton alumni. They appointed Jonathan Maxcy, a Brown graduate, as the university's first president. Thomas Cooper, an Oxford alumnus and University of Pennsylvania faculty member, became the second president of the South Carolina college. The founders of the University of California came from Yale, hence the school colors of University of California are Yale Blue and California Gold.
Attending one of the top educational institutions certainly offers plenty of advantages post-graduation. And do they do a better job at this than the thousands of other colleges in the nation? In a 2000 book, education experts Howard and Matthew Greene — the same duo who expanded Moll's list of Public Ivies — proposed the idea of the "Hidden Ivies." These 63 highly selective colleges offer a premier liberal arts education. Ivy League colleges also aren't the only schools where you'll derive inspiration from the amazing things the students around you are doing. There are many selective colleges and universities around the country that attract highly motivated students and have learning environments that will challenge you.
Though the Ivies have high concentrations of intense students, they definitely don't have a monopoly on undergraduate talent. Ivies represent some of the most selective and well-known colleges in the country. The schools of the Ivy League have had more time than most other colleges to build up their reputations through the accumulation of highly successful graduates. In addition to competitive undergraduate programs, Ivy League universities offer some of the best professional programs for law and medicine. Cornell features by far the largest undergraduate enrollment of any Ivy League school, with over 15,000 full-time students. Its large size and unique blend of public and private funding differentiate Cornell from other Ivies, giving the university an atmosphere similar to that of a large public university.
Like Dartmouth, Cornell's rural setting and the prevalence of Greek life stand in contrast to smaller, more urban Ivies. Campus life and recreational activities at Cornell take advantage of the natural setting and relative isolation of the campus. Many student groups involve outdoor activities; athletics, hiking in the surrounding wilderness, and canoeing in the nearby Finger Lakes are common pastimes for Cornell students.
In the time before recruiting for college sports became dominated by those offering athletic scholarships and lowered academic standards for athletes, the Ivy League was successful in many sports relative to other universities in the country. In particular, Princeton won 26 recognized national championships in college football , and Yale won 18 . Both of these totals are considerably higher than those of other historically strong programs such as Alabama, which has won 15, Notre Dame, which claims 11 but is credited by many sources with 13, and USC, which has won 11. Yale, whose coach Walter Camp was the "Father of American Football," held on to its place as the all-time wins leader in college football throughout the entire 20th century, but was finally passed by Michigan on November 10, 2001. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn each have over a dozen former scholar-athletes enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Currently Dartmouth holds the record for most Ivy League football titles, with 18, followed closely by Harvard and Penn, each with 17 titles. In addition, the Ivy League has produced Super Bowl winners Kevin Boothe , two-time Pro Bowler Zak DeOssie , Sean Morey , All-Pro selection Matt Birk , Calvin Hill , Derrick Harmon and 1999 "Mr. Irrelevant" Jim Finn . In one sport, rowing, the Ivies recognize team champions for each sex in both heavyweight and lightweight divisions.
While the Intercollegiate Rowing Association governs all four sex- and bodyweight-based divisions of rowing, the only one that is sanctioned by the NCAA is women's heavyweight. The Ivy League was the last Division I basketball conference to institute a conference postseason tournament; the first tournaments for men and women were held at the end of the 2016–17 season. The tournaments only award the Ivy League automatic bids for the NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments; the official conference championships continue to be awarded based solely on regular-season results. Before the 2016–17 season, the automatic bids were based solely on regular-season record, with a one-game playoff (or series of one-game playoffs if more than two teams were tied) held to determine the automatic bid.
The Ivy League is one of only two Division I conferences which award their official basketball championships solely on regular-season results; the other is the Southeastern Conference. Since its inception, an Ivy League school has yet to win either the men's or women's Division I NCAA Basketball Tournament. Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth all held early associations with the Congregationalists. Princeton was financed by New Light Presbyterians, though originally led by a Congregationalist.
Brown was founded by Baptists, though the university's charter stipulated that students should enjoy "full liberty of conscience." Columbia was founded by Anglicans, who composed 10 of the college's first 15 presidents. Penn and Cornell were officially nonsectarian, though Protestants were well represented in their respective founding. In the early nineteenth century, the specific purpose of training Calvinist ministers was handed off to theological seminaries, but a denominational tone and religious traditions including compulsory chapel often lasted well into the twentieth century. The term "Ivy League" came about in 1954, when the NCAA athletic conference for Division I was formed. At the time, the elitism of these schools was really due to their prestige in the realm of sports like basketball. Although the term "Ivy League" was not created until the 1950s, many of these schools were in existence as far back as 1636, when John Harvard became the first benefactor of Harvard University.
In 1746, the New Jersey school of Princeton was founded and was originally simply named the College of New Jersey. The smallest Ivy League school, Dartmouth, was established in 1769 in Hanover, New Hampshire. And finally, Cornell University got its start in 1865 thanks to two benefactors named Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White.
Dartmouth College is located in Hanover, New Hampshire, and is rated the #1 school in New Hampshire. It is a fairly small school considered to some other Ivy League schools, with a little over 4,000 undergrad students. With a 9% acceptance rate, Dartmouth is quite selective, and accepts students within the range of 1420 to 1560 SAT grades and ACT grades.
The Ivy League schools are the eight selective private institutions in the Northeast that make up the Ivy League Athletic Conference. Over time, the term "Ivy League" became synonymous with prestigious colleges. For this and other reasons, it's risky to assume that Ivy League grads will end up more "successful" overall than other students.
Success is more about a student's inherent drive and ability than which school he or she ends up attending. The main reason an Ivy League school might be better than any other top-tier university is due to name recognition. A diploma from an Ivy League college may open doors for you because employers and graduate school admissions officers will know immediately that you went to an extremely competitive school.