Ivy League

About Ivy League

The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education located in the Northeastern United States. The term is most commonly used to refer to those eight schools considered as a group. The term also has connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and a reputation for social elitism.

The term became official, especially in sports terminology, after the formation of the NCAA Division I athletic conference in 1954, when much of the nation polarized around favorite college teams. The use of the phrase is no longer limited to athletics, and now represents an educational philosophy inherent to the nation's oldest schools.

All of the Ivy League's institutions place near the top in the U.S. News & World Report college and university rankings and rank within the top one percent of the world's academic institutions in terms of financial endowment. Seven of the eight schools were founded during America's colonial period; the exception is Cornell, which was founded in 1865. Ivy League institutions, therefore, account for seven of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The Ivies also are all located in the Northeast region of the United States and are privately owned and controlled. Although many of them receive funding from the federal or state governments to pursue research, only Cornell has state-supported academic units, termed "statutory" or "contract" colleges, that are an integral part of the institution.