This is a two-part question. When did the phrase “Ivy League” colleges come to be? And, what makes these colleges any more prestigious than, say, MIT or Hopkins? Surely they are not strictly the oldest schools in the U.S. as UVa was founded by Thomas Jefferson. Is it all because of money or is it really academics?
And, why are there no Ivy League schools south of PA, such as Duke? Or, west of Philly, such as UCLA, Berkeley, and Stanford? Aren’t these schools just as prestigious? (This begs the question what gives all these colleges more prestige than say Case-Western, and many other well-known colleges in the US mid-section?) How did these snobs come to draw such a fine line of exclusivity? Who made them the supreme authority on education…and growing ivy?
I must WAG it is all for money, esp. old money to assure “the breed” (i.e.: the bloodline of alumni) is kept pure, right? - Jinx
P.S.: Merriam-Webster’s first defintion of “prestigious” is “archaic: of, relating to, or marked by illusion, conjuring, or trickery” Hmm… much the truth may be spoken here…as quoted from their website offering a free, online (abridged) dictionary as found here: Prestigious Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
“Ivy League” isn’t a term that is applied to certain schools from the outside as an honorary term. It is merely an organization of certain older East Cost schools. One of its primary functions is to serve as a sports league with unique rules for themselves like no athletic scholarships.
The Ivy League Schools are:
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Cornell
Brown
Dartmouth
Columbia
University of Pennsylvania (private school despite the name).
Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, no schools are being considered for admission to the Ivy League. The present 8 are all there ever have been and all there ever will be.
All the Ivy League schools are good but there are plenty of great schools that aren’t in the Ivy League. Schools like Stanford and MIT aren’t intimidated by threw Ivy League competitors for example.
The Wiki article on Ivy League covers this pretty thoroughly.
The term was invented by a sportswriter in 1933, and not commonly used until after the NCAA was formed in the 1954. It’s a much more recent term than people think. The term went from the “league” (which wasn’t formalized until recent times) to the schools themselves, because of their prestige. WAG: FDR’s Brain Trust, mostly of Ivy League professors, may have tipped the scales in public recognition.
Rutgers, aka The University of New Jersey, was thought of as part of the same bunch of schools at one time and so were West Point and the Naval Academy, both of which had important sports programs, especially in football.
Cornell is the outlier. It wasn’t founded until 1850 and is a land grant college (i.e. veterinary and agriculture programs) like Ohio State, of all declasse things. How to explain it and not Rutgers is the toughy, and I can’t do it.
My Alma Mater. It actually wasn’t founded until 1865. Only part of it is state supported, there being three undergraduate “contract” state colleges, and four endowed undergraduate colleges.
I was proud to be an Ivy League Aggie. (It was much cheaper for in-state Bio majors to go to the Ag School rather than attend the endowed College of Arts and Sciences.) I sometimes jokingly tell people I went to the New York State College of Agriculture in Ithaca NY.
“Dumb Aggies” were the butt of many jokes on campus, since Ag was reputedly easier than Arts and Sciences. Fortunately we weren’t the bottom of the barrel. On a par with us were the “Hume Eccies,” students at the state College of Human Ecology, formerly the College of Home Economics. We outranked the “Hotelies,” students at the Statler School of Hotel Adminstration, which oddly enough was one of the endowed colleges and not a state school. My senior year I had a Hotelie house mate who scarcely moved from the recliner in front of the TV all year. He got an “Ivy League” degree all the same.
Because of this Cornell is regarded as something of “country cousin” among the Ivy League schools. At one point the was a sign on one of the gates that proclaimed “Cornell University - An Ivy League School” or some such. Among the rest of the Ivies, Cornell became known as the only one that actually had a sign proclaiming itself Ivy League - or that needed to.
Well, Cornell is still a top school, somewhere between 8th and 12th-ranked in the country depending on the source. But the reason it and not some other Universities are considered “Ivy League” is a historical artifact originating from its membership in a sports league.
I read somewhere that the name comes from the Roman numeral for four: IV. there were originally four colleges in the sports conference. Anyone know if that’s on target?
That just pushes the question back. Why was Cornell was in that league back in the late 19th/early 20th Century? Cornell was not considered one of the elitest colleges at that time. And it’s not like Rutgers wasn’t playing sports. Football started there, or the first intercollege game did.
Was Rutgers taken over by the state at that point? It was a private college originally, but it could be that if it lost that status it was no longer considered a peer.
You got Cornell mixed up with the University of Rochester?? (MY alma mater, btw ) The U of R will be quite pleased to hear that, while those up on the hill at the end of the lake will be laughing, no doubt.
There used to be rumors from time to time that U of R was this close to joining the Ivy League. The supposedly official response was that they didn’t want to be Div. I (U of R is Div. III and proud of it). The real answer, of course, is that the Ivy League wasn’t the least interested, not any time after, oh, 1940 or so at best. Now, U of R is part of a league that has some other pretty decent schools, such as Univ. of Chicago, Washington U. in St. Louis, etc. But Ivy league it is not.
But the relevant time period for formalization of the name was between the mid 1930s and mid 1950s, as your link and others show. I think Cornell was in the elite academic group by that time. And (from here) the Ivy League universities were united by:
In other words, since they prohibited athletic scholarships, the Ivies in part had to form their own separate league in order to avoid getting creamed by schools that had them. Possibly Rutgers wanted to keep athletic scholarships, while Cornell didn’t.
) The U of R will be quite pleased to hear that, while those up on the hill at the end of the lake will be laughing, no doubt.