A group of long-established and prestigious colleges in NE USA. The league was formally established in 1956 to oversee inter-collegiate sports. It includes the universities of Harvard (Cambridge, MA, founded 1636), Yale (New Haven, CT, founded 1701), Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, founded 1740), Princeton (Princeton, NJ, founded 1746), Columbia (New York City, NY, founded 1754), Brown (Providence, RI, founded 1764), Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH, founded 1769), and Cornell (Ithaca, NY, founded 1865).
| Ivy League | |
|---|---|
| Data | |
| Classification | NCAA Division I-AA |
| Established | 1954 |
| Members | 8 |
| Sports fielded | 33 |
| Region | Northeast |
| States |
7 - Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island |
| Headquarters | Princeton, NJ |
| Other names | Ancient Eight |
|
Executive Director |
Jeffrey H. Orleans |
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education located in the Northeastern United States.
Undergraduate enrollments among the Ivy League schools vary considerably, ranging from 4,078 at Dartmouth College to 13,700 at Cornell University, but they are generally larger than those of a traditional liberal arts college and smaller than those of a typical public state university.
Members
All of the schools in the Ivy League are private and not currently associated with any religion.
| Institution | Location | Athletic Nickname | Founding religious affiliation | Full-time enrollment | Founded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brown University | Providence, Rhode Island | Bears | Baptist | 7,809 | 1764 as College of Rhode Island |
| Columbia University | New York, New York | Lions | Anglican | 23,813 | 1754 as King's College |
| Cornell University | Ithaca, New York | Big Red | Nonsectarian | 20,400 | 1865 |
| Dartmouth College | Hanover, New Hampshire | Big Green | Puritan (Congregationalist) | 5,744 | 1769 |
| Harvard University | Cambridge, Massachusetts | Crimson | Puritan (Congregationalist); sided with the Unitarians in their 1825 split from Congregationalists | 19,779 | 1636, but named Harvard College in 1638 |
| Princeton University | Princeton, New Jersey | Tigers | Presbyterian | 6,677 | 1746 as College of New Jersey |
| University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | Quakers | Nonsectarian | 23,704 | 1749 |
| Yale University | New Haven, Connecticut | Bulldogs | Puritan (Congregationalist) | 11,483 | 1701 as Collegiate School |
Shields and mottos
|
Brown University |
Columbia University |
Cornell University |
Dartmouth College |
|
Harvard University |
University of Pennsylvania: |
Princeton University |
Yale University |
Origin of the name
Named after the ivy plants that traditionally cover their historic buildings (which, oddly enough, is found barely anywhere on the Dartmouth campus), the term Ivy League was first coined informally to refer to these institutions of higher education which compete in both scholastics and sports.
Before there was an Ivy League
Seven of the Ivy League schools are older than the American Revolution;
History of the athletic league
The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. As an informal football league, the Ivy League dates from 1900 when Yale took the conference championship with a 5-0 record.
Before the formal formation of the Ivy League, there was an "unwritten and unspoken agreement among certain Eastern colleges on athletic relations". In 1935, The Associated Press reported on an example of collaboration between the schools:
the athletic authorities of the so-called "Ivy League" are considering drastic measures to curb the increasing tendency toward riotous attacks on goal posts and other encroachments by spectators on playing fields.
Despite such collaboration, the universities did not seem to consider the formation of the league as imminent. Romeyn Berry, Cornell's director of intercollegiate relations, reported the situation in January 1936 as follows:
I can say with certainty that in the last five years — and markedly in the last three months — there has been a strong drift among the eight or ten universities of the East which see a good deal of one another in sport toward a closer bond of confidence and cooperation and toward the formation of a common front against the threat of a breakdown in the ideals of amateur sport in the interests of supposed expediency.
Please do not regard that statement as implying the organization of an Eastern conference or even a poetic "Ivy League." That sort of thing does not seem to be in the cards at the moment.
Within a year of this statement and after having held one-month-long discussions about the proposal, on December 3, 1936, the idea of "the formation of an Ivy League" gained enough traction among the undergraduate bodies of the universities that the Columbia Daily Spectator, The Cornell Daily Sun, The Dartmouth, The Harvard Crimson, The Daily Pennsylvanian, The Daily Princetonian and the Yale Daily News would simultaneously run an editorial entitled "Now Is the Time", encouraging the seven universities to form the league in an effort to preserve the ideals of athletics. Part of the editorial read as follows:
The Ivy League exists already in the minds of a good many of those connected with football, and we fail to see why the seven schools concerned should be satisfied to let it exist as a purely nebulous entity where there are so many practical benefits which would be possible under definite organized association. Athletes shall be admitted as students and awarded financial aid only on the basis of the same academic standards and economic need as are applied to all other students.
In 1954, the date generally accepted as the birth of the Ivy League, the presidents extended the Ivy Group Agreement to all intercollegiate sports.
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 (1865) and Columbia being the last (1983) to become coeducational.
Reputation
All Ivy League schools are known for their highly selective undergraduate programs, and acceptance rates now range from 8.6% for Yale to 24.7% for Cornell.
Although the Ivy League is usually regarded as a cohesive group from the outside, there is a considerable amount of internal academic rivalry and competition among its eight members.
However, at the same time, there is a great deal of collaboration between the member schools, with a student-led Ivy Council that meets in the fall and spring of each year, with representatives from every Ivy League school except for Harvard. Cornell has the largest campus in the Ivy League with 745 acres (301 ha) of property in Central New York State (not counting the properties which compose the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City). In some sports, Ivy teams actually compete as members of another league, the Ivy championship being decided by isolating the members' records in play against each other. but an Ivy champion is extrapolated each year.) Unlike all other Division I basketball conferences, the Ivy League has no tournament for the league title; Less storied rivalries exist between other Ivy league teams in other sports, including Cornell and Harvard in hockey (either team has won or shared the men's title each of the last 5 years), and Harvard and Penn in football (either Penn or Harvard has won the title since 2000, and both teams have traded undefeated seasons since 2001).
In the time before recruiting for college sports became dominated by those offering athletic scholarships, the Ivy League was successful in many sports relative to other universities in the country.
Although no longer as successful nationally as they once were in many of the more popular college sports, the Ivy League is still competitive in others.
Athletic teams
Brown Bears Columbia Lions Cornell Big Red Dartmouth Big Green Harvard Crimson Penn Quakers Princeton Tigers Yale BulldogsConference facilities
| School | American Football stadium | Basketball arena | Ice hockey rink | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Capacity | Name | Capacity | Name | Capacity | |
| Brown | Brown Stadium | 20,000 | Pizzitola Sports Center | 2,800 | Meehan Auditorium | 3,100 |
| Columbia | Wien Stadium | 17,000 | Levien Gymnasium | 3,408 | N/A | |
| Cornell | Schoellkopf Field | 25,597 | Newman Arena | 4,473 | Lynah Rink | 3,836 |
| Dartmouth | Memorial Field | 20,000 | Leede Arena | 2,100 | Thompson Arena | 5,000 |
| Harvard | Harvard Stadium | 30,898 | Lavietes Pavilion | 2,195 | Bright Hockey Center | 2,850 |
| Penn | Franklin Field | 52,593 | The Palestra | 8,700 | The Class of 1923 Arena | 2,900 |
| Princeton | Princeton Stadium | 27,800 | Jadwin Gymnasium | 6,854 | Hobey Baker Memorial Rink | 2,094 |
| Yale | Yale Bowl | 64,269 | Payne Whitney Gym | 3,100 | Ingalls Rink | 3,486 |
Clothing style
Ivy League can also refer to a style of men's dress, popular in the late 1950s, and said to have originated on college campuses.
Other "Ivies"
Marketing groups, journalists, and some educators sometimes describe other colleges as "Ivies," as in Little Ivies; These uses of "ivy" are intended to compliment the other schools by comparing them to the Ivy League, but unlike the "Ivy League" label, they have no canonical definition.
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