| Ivy League | |
|---|---|
| Ivy League | |
| Data | |
| Established | 1954 |
| Members | 8 |
| Continent | North America |
| Country | United States |
| University type | Private |
| Other names | Ancient Eight |
The Ivy League is an athletic conference, founded in 1954, of eight institutions of higher education located in the eastern United States. The term has connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and a certain amount of academic elitism.
All of the Ivy League institutions share some general characteristics: They are among the most prestigious and selective schools in the U.S., they consistently place close to the top of college and university rankings; they rank within the top one percent of the world's academic institutions in terms of financial endowment; they attract top-tier students and faculty; and they have relatively small undergraduate populations, ranging between 4,079 for Dartmouth College and 13,700 for Cornell University and modestly sized graduate student populations, ranging between 1,625 for Dartmouth and 14,692 for Columbia. Seven of the eight schools (Cornell University being the exception) were founded during America's colonial period. The Ivies also are all located in the Northeast region of the United States. Notably, the Ivies also prohibit the offering of athletic scholarships to students in most cases; this ban differentiates Ivy teams from those of schools that permit students to receive scholarships to attend or to join a team.
The Ivy League institutions 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 colleges, that are an integral part of the institution.
Members
The members of the Ivy League are, in alphabetical order:
- Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, founded in 1764 as College of Rhode Island.
- Columbia University in New York, New York, founded in 1754 as King's College.
- Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, founded in 1865.
- Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, founded in 1769.
- Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded in 1636, named Harvard College in 1638.
- University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1740 as the Academy of Philadelphia.
- Princeton University, in Princeton borough and Princeton township, New Jersey, founded in 1746 as College of New Jersey.
- Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, founded in 1701 as Collegiate School.
Shields and mottos
-
Cornell
"I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study" -
Terminology
Named after the ivy plants that traditionally cover their buildings, the term Ivy League was first coined informally to refer to these institutions of higher education which compete in both scholastics and sports. Formally, it also refers to the association of these schools in NCAA Division I athletic competition. The Ivy League universities are often simply called the Ivies or, affectionately, the Ancient Eight.
The term "Ivy League" refers strictly to the original eight universities. However, the prestige associated with the Ivy League has given rise to similar terms that connote perceived preeminence within various realms of American higher education: "Jesuit Ivy", "Little Ivies", "Public Ivies", etc. These terms are strictly colloquial and have no relation to the original eight schools.
History
The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the U.S. Boat clubs from Harvard and Yale met in the first sporting event held between students of two U.S. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, in 1852. 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 (the United States Military Academy), Navy (the United States Naval Academy), and to a lesser extent Rutgers were considered members, but dropped out shortly before formal organization. For instance, Army traditionally had a rivalry with Yale, which some assert is set to resume in the next few years, and Rutgers had rivalries with Princeton and Columbia, which continue today in sports other than football.
On October 14, 1937, when Caswell Adams, a sports writer for the New York Herald Tribune, was assigned a Columbia-Pennsylvania football game, he remarked, "Do I have to watch the ivy grow every Saturday afternoon? How about letting me see some football away from the ivy-covered halls of learning for a change?" Stanley Woodward, a fellow writer, overheard this and coined the phrase "Ivy League" in a column, informally describing the eight competitive universities in advance of any formal sports conference, and his phrase quickly caught on.
In 1945 the presidents of the eight schools signed the first Ivy Group Agreement, which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for the football teams. The principles established reiterated those put forward in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Presidents' Agreement of 1916.
In 1954, the date generally accepted as the birth of the Ivy League, the presidents extended the Ivy Group Agreement to all intercollegiate sports. Competition began with the 1956 season.
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. 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 were situated very near 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.) Some sources suggest that the Seven Sisters group was so named as a parallel to the Ivy League. [1]
A fake etymology attributes the name to the Roman numerals for four (IV), incorrectly asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins helped to perpetuate this myth, claiming that over a century ago, Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton formed an athletic league called the "Four League." [2]
Notable programs
Many of the universities are well known for their top-rate graduate and professional programs (the acceptance rate at Harvard's medical school is around 5%). Some notable programs include:
- Brown's Medical School
- Columbia's Business School, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Law School, Columbia School of the Arts, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), School of Journalism, and Teachers College, and Mailman School of Public Health
- Cornell's College of Engineering, Law School, Johnson School of Management, Weill Medical College, NYS College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, NYS College of Veterinary Medicine, NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations and School of Hotel Administration
- Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering
- Harvard's Business School, Kennedy School of Government, Law School, Medical School, and School of Education, Harvard School of Public Health
- Penn's Law School, School of Social Policy & Practice, School of Education, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, Annenberg School for Communication, and The Wharton School
- Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and School of Architecture (Princeton maintains its undergraduate focus and does not have professional schools)
- Yale's Law School, School of Management, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, School of Art, School of Drama, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Music and School of Architecture, Yale School of Public Health.
Reputation
All Ivy League schools are known for their highly selective undergraduate programs, and acceptance rates now range from 9.1% for Harvard to 26.1% for Cornell. These rates are far lower than they were previously. Indeed, as recently as 1992, acceptance rates ranged from 16% for Harvard all the way up to 47% for the University of Pennsylvania (1).
In most college and university rankings, all or almost all of the Ivy League schools rank in the top tier. The ranking of the schools is greatly dependent on what each survey places the most weight, such as average class size, volume of research, and faculty accolades.
Endowments
The Ivy League schools are among the wealthiest private universities in 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 financial endowments over $1 billion.[3] Harvard, with a $22.6 billion endowment (as of 2004), is the wealthiest university in the world, and is the second non-profit organization in the world to report an endowment over $20 billion, only surpassed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.[4] Yale, with an endowment size of $15.2 billion (2005 value), is the second-wealthiest, and Princeton, with $10.3 billion, is third. Next comes Columbia with $4.5 billion, Penn with $4 billion, Cornell with $3.75 billion, Dartmouth with $2.6 billion, and Brown with $1.96 billion. Princeton, the wealthiest institution in the country on a per capita basis, has a per-student endowment of $1.32 million, followed by Harvard with $1.15 million, Yale with $1.12 million, Dartmouth with $455,820, Brown and Columbia with $200,000, Penn with $190,000, and Cornell with $190,000.
Land ownership
Cornell has the largest campus in the Ivy League with 745 acres (3 km²) of property in Upstate New York. Dartmouth, the largest landowner in New Hampshire, owns 265 acres (1.1 km²) in its main campus in Hanover, New Hampshire and nearly 27,000 acres (109 km²)[5] in northern New Hampshire. Princeton owns 600 acres (2.4 km²) in a suburban environment. Harvard owns nearly 571 acres (2.3 km²) in an urban setting (220 in Cambridge[6] and 352 directly across the river in Boston[7]) as well as holding a 1000-year lease (ending in 2882) on the 265 acres of the Arnold Arboretum also in Boston[8]. The University of Pennsylvania has 269 acres (1.1 km²). Yale owns 260 acres (1.1 km²) in an urban setting and Brown has 143 acres (0.6 km²) in urban Providence. Columbia owns over 82 acres (0.33 km²) in Manhattan: a 36 acre (0.14 km²) campus in Morningside Heights, the 26 acre (0.1 km²) Baker Field athletic complex, a 20 acre (0.09 km²) health sciences campus, as well as numerous individual buildings and properties. It is notably among the largest private landowners in New York City, third only after the city itself and the Catholic Church. Columbia also operates the 157 acre (0.64 km²) Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in the New York Palisades, and the 500 acre Harriman Estate ("Arden House") in Orange County, a northern suburb of New York City.
Cooperation
Seven of the eight schools (Harvard excluded) participate in the Borrow Direct interlibrary loan program, making a total of 40 million items available to participants with a waiting period of four working days. This ILL program is not affiliated with the formal Ivy arrangement. (Harvard holds another 15 million items in its collection.)
Competition
Ivy champions are crowned in 33 men's and women's sports. 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. (For example, the six league members who participate in ice hockey do so as members of the ECAC Hockey League; 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; the school with the best conference record represents the conference in the Division I NCAA Basketball Tournament (with a one-game playoff in the case of a tie).
On average, each Ivy school has more than 35 varsity teams. All eight are in the top 20 for number of sports offered for both men and women among Division I schools. In some sports, notably baseball and tennis, the Ivy League teams also frequently compete against Army and Navy.
Harvard and Yale are celebrated football and crew rivals. Penn and Cornell are football rivals. Columbia and Princeton have a rivalry that goes back to the fourth college football game ever played. Princeton and Penn are mainly basketball rivals. Cornell and Harvard are hockey rivals. Unlike most Division I athletic conferences, the Ivy League prohibits the granting of athletic scholarships; all scholarships awarded are need-based (financial aid) [9]. Since there is no outright athletic scholarship program, the schools are typically less competitive in football and basketball, even when compared to universities with comparably rigorous academic standards.
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. In particular, Princeton won 24 recognized national championships in college football, and Yale won 19. Both of these totals are considerably higher than those of other historically strong programs such as Notre Dame, which has won 12, and USC, which has won 10. 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.
Although no longer as successful nationally as they once were in many of the more popular college sports, the Ivy League still dominates others. One such example is rowing. Harvard, for example, has more National Rowing Championships than any other school in the country and most recently has won the IRA Championships the last three years in a row (2003, 2004, 2005). The other seven Ivies have historically been, and continue to be, among the top crews in the nation. This excellence dates back to 1852 when students from Harvard and Yale competed in the original Harvard-Yale Regatta, the first intercollegiate sporting event in the United States. Only recently have teams outside of the Ivy League, such as the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Washington, gained national titles.
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. Among these elite universities, there is a heated competition for students. In 2002, admissions officers at Princeton logged into the Yale admissions website to view the admissions status of cross-applicants, using the names, birthdates, and social security numbers indicated on their Princeton applications [10]. Yale's administration notified the FBI about the actions after conducting its own investigation. Princeton moved one admissions official to a different department over the incident and the university's Dean of Admissions retired soon thereafter.
References
1. U.S. News and World Report 1993 College Guide - June 4, 1993.
2. StudentsReview Official Rankings - Jan 1, 2005.