Big Three (colleges)

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The Big Three is an historical term used in the United States to refer to Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. The phrase Big Three originated in the 1880s, when these three colleges dominated college football[1]. High schools' college admissions counselors and colleges' admissions guides sometimes use the initialism HYP to refer to these colleges. In the early 1900s, these schools formed a sports compact which predates the Ivy League. And they continue to refer to their intercollegiate rivalries as a 'Big Three' or 'Harvard-Yale-Princeton' meet.

In the past, these colleges had a special, iconic status which is related to, but separate from their stellar academic reputations. When only current academic reputation is considered, these three schools are outstanding but not clearly separated from other top schools and, depending on which ranking is used, not always among the top three. (§2 below).

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[edit] Historic status of the Big Three

These colleges have, in the past, been set apart from others by a special historic connection with the WASP establishment; as E. Digby Baltzell writes, "the three major upper-class institutions in America have been Harvard, Yale, and Princeton." Baltzell also goes on to write that "Throughout the thirties and well into the forties, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, were still staffed almost entirely by old-stock Protestants."[2]

In any case, academic factors alone do not explain the separation of these three colleges from close academic rivals, nor do they explain why they are usually named in the order "Harvard, Yale and Princeton."[3]

Theodore Roosevelt puts them into social context:

We drew recruits from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and many another college; from clubs like the Somerset, of Boston, and Knickerbocker, of New York; and from among the men who belonged neither to club nor to college, but in whose veins the blood stirred with the same impulse which once sent the Vikings over sea. (Theodore Roosevelt, 1899) [4]

Of the three, Princeton University was traditionally the preferred choice of the Southern upper class.[5]

Burt (1963) described the social prestige of the Big Three:

It is, above all, the national social prestige of the Big Three which is competition with the purely local social prestige of the University [of Pennsylvania]. Upper-class boys from all over the country, including Philadelphia, go to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Only from Philadelphia do upper-class boys go in any significant numbers to Penn. This is of course a universal national phenomenon. The pattern of upper-class male college preference, as deduced from a counting of noses in the various Social Registers, can be summed up as "The Big Three and a Local Favorite."[6]

Burt goes on to note "Every city sends or has sent its Socially Registered sons to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, in some preferred order, and to one local institution. This order varies. New York sets the pattern with Yale first, Harvard second, Princeton third, then Columbia. St. Louis and Baltimore are Princeton towns. Most other cities (Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati) are Yale towns. Only Boston, and occasionally Washington, are Harvard towns."

The connection between certain colleges and social ranking is old; Jerome Karabel, in a note citing Kenneth Davis, says that "in the mid-eighteenth century, the [president of Harvard] personally listed students when they enrolled, according to ... 'to the Dignity of the Familie whereto the student severally belong'—a list that was printed in the college catalogue and that determined precedence in such matters as table seating, position in academic processionals, even recitations in class."[7]. Ronald Story, however, says that it was during "the four decades from 1815 to 1855" that "parents, in Henry Adams' words, began 'sending their children to Harvard College for the sake of its social advantages.'"[8].

A further intensification of the importance of the Big Three occurred during the 1920s; According to E. Digby Baltzell[9], "in a ... managerial society, the proper college degree became the main criterion for potential elite status... it was during the [1920s] that certain institutions of high prestige, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton (and Stanford on the West Coast) became all-important as upper-class-ascribing institutions." Not coincidentally, this was also the era when the Big Three became concerned by "the Jewish problem" and began instituting interviews, essays, and judgements of "character" into the admissions process[10]. From the 1930s on, Big Three admissions became progressively more meritocratic, but still include non-academic factors such as "lineage."

Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have in the past been regarded as the goals for many children in WASP circles. Some educators have attempted to discourage this fixation. Jay Mathews, author of Harvard Schmarvard, addresses seniors obsessed with HYP, and similar prestigious institutions, with the analysis, "It does not matter where you go to school, it matters what you do when you get there and what you do after you graduate." It is notable that according to Princeton Review, Harvard is ranked as the #2 "dream school" among US college applicants in 2005, with #1 being New York University.

[edit] Current academic quality of the Big Three

The historical social position of the combination of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale in US society is related to, but separate from, their actual academic quality. The practice of admitting less- qualified legacy applicants and widespread grade inflation has brought their actual academic quality into question in recent years. In response, the universities have considered legacy less in admissions, and both Princeton and Harvard have eliminated the elitist Early decision option (non-binding Early Application in Harvard's case) from their admissions policy. Princeton has created a policy of grade deflation where not more than 35% of students can receive A's in any class.

While they are still considered among the most prestigious colleges in the US, they are not always ranked as the top three universities overall.

According to both the Times Higher Education Supplement and the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the four top universities in the United States (in terms of quality of research and staffing levels in the case of the former and scientific research leading to a Nobel Prize in the case of the latter) are:

  1. Stanford University
  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  3. Harvard University
  4. University of California, Berkeley

The four universities are notably scientifically research-intensive, the main criterion of both rankings.

According to Newsweek International's "Top 100 Global Universities," published in 2006 [2], the rankings of the above similarly excellent schools are as follows:

  1. Harvard
  2. Stanford
  3. Yale
  4. UC Berkeley
  5. MIT
  6. Columbia
  7. Penn
  8. Duke
  9. Princeton

The criteria for Newsweek's rankings are "the number of highly-cited researchers in various academic fields, the number of articles published in Nature and Science, and the number of articles listed in the ISI Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities indices." Universities with a high scientific research focus, and many published articles, are rated more highly.

The US News & World Report ranking, however, places HYP as the top three universities in the US. The top six universities are as follows: 1. Princeton 2. Harvard 3. Yale 4. Stanford 4. California Institute of Technology 4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology The US News rankings are based on indicators of the quality of undergraduate education rather than research. Main indicators include class sizes, student retention, selectivity, and academic quality of entering students. However, this has not always been the case; in the past, Duke University, Caltech, and MIT have ranked in the top three.

The New York Times reports that "when asked how he knew his system was sound, Mel Elfin, the rankings' founder, often answered that he knew it because those three schools always landed on top."[11].

Harvard, Yale and Princeton have consistently graduated the largest number of Rhodes Scholars. In the Wall Street Journal ranking of "feeder schools" (those schools sending the largest proportions of their graduating classes on to the top graduate schools in the country), HYP similarly were ranked as the top three.

A significant difference between the Newsweek and US News rankings is that the latter mainly considers information about an undergraduate experience as opposed to all levels of academic study. For instance, Princeton has no professional schools, unlike Harvard, Stanford and Yale, and places significant administrative focus on undergraduates. It's number of graduate students (roughly 2000) is less than half the number of undergraduates (5000). Thus, it has fewer students performing higher-level research and academic work (towards a Ph.D), the main indicators used in the other rankings.

[edit] Ranking debates

Main article: college and university rankings

The actual academic quality of the three colleges is a matter of judgment and debate. So is their selectivity. Yale had the lowest admissions acceptance rate (8.6%) among major US colleges in 2006, with Harvard and Columbia coming in second and third. But, in part because it uses slightly outdated information, U.S. News ranks Harvard as most selective, followed by second-place Yale (even though they have the same average SAT range among their entering class).

US News' rankings place a high value on low admissions rates, small class sizes, and high rates of alumni giving; which disfavors larger institutions, which may reject as many or more applicants, but nevertheless have higher admissions rates. They also disfavor schools with math and science-based curriculum, as well as public schools, because they tend to have a lower short-term graduation rates.

The September 2002 issue of Worth magazine ranked high schools on the basis of the number of students from those high schools matriculating at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Worth magazine argued that the three schools were "three of the most selective Ivy colleges; the term HYP has come to signify the elite college standard."

[edit] Current Lack of Economic Diversity

Over the past half-century, the 'Big Three', and the rest of the Ivy League, have increasingly stressed both diversity and academic merit in their admissions process, and in part have freed themselves from some of their WASP roots. Notwithstanding, their students, on the whole, lack in economic diversity. As Jerome Karabel, a Harvard graduate and the author of The Chosen detailing the history of the admissions process at HYP, noted:

The Big Three are notoriously lacking one of [diversity's] most critical dimensions: class diversity. In a study of the percentage of low-income students in 2000 (as measured by the proportion of federal Pell Grants - need-based awards that do not have to be repaid and make up the bulk of many poorer students' aid) at the nation's leading universities, the Big Three were found to be among the nation's least economically diverse schools. Of the 40 universities studied, Harvard and Princeton ranked 39th and 38th respectively, with Yale at 25th. While the three top universities in economic diversity were all public institutions (the University of California at Los Angeles, UC-Berkeley, and UC-San Diego), the next two - the University of Southern California and New York University - were private. And one university in the top 10, California Institute of Technology, is among the most selective private institutions in the nation."[3]

[edit] Shorthand Acronyms

  • HYP — Harvard, Yale, and Princeton

[edit] Order of the names

The three colleges, when named together, are often named in the order Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. This most likely reflects their relative age—their founding dates being 1636, 1701, and 1746, respectively[12]—which in turn is an important point of institutional pride, since it governs the order in which the institutions march in academic processions.

The order might also be a reflection of each university's prestige factor, or status in the popular opinion. Harvard has historically had the highest yield rate of the three (yield being a measure of the choice of students accepted at more than one institution) with Yale and Princeton in second and third, respectively.

Harvard also has the largest student body, with Yale second, and Princeton third with its small graduate school. In contrast, Princeton has the largest campus of the three, with Harvard second and Yale third.

A more common explanation is simply that the original 1880s journalistic initialism was coined that way because it actually results in an acronym, "HYP", and it simply stuck. Given that the acronym HYP is rarely used out of context (having been preceded by a listing of the universities), the order can vary by publication.

[edit] The Big Three as an athletic association

Harvard-Yale-Princeton (variously HYP, H-Y-P, H/Y/P, the Big Three, or the Ancient Three) is an athletic association involving Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. The athletic agreements among the three universities were first formalized in 1906, although their football teams had been engaging in three-way competitions, which newspapers had been referring to as "HYP", since at least the 1880s. The Big Three made further formal agreements in 1916 and 1923, and although in part they have now been superseded by the Ivy League, formed in 1945, the three universities still sponsor events that involve only themselves.

The first Big Three agreement in 1906 was the result of a conference on football called by President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt in October 1905 as a result of deteriorating relations, particularly the exclusion of Princeton by Harvard and Yale, and increasing violence of play. The agreement of June 1916, the Triple Agreement, was originally proposed by President Woodrow Wilson in December 1909 out of a desire to reduce injuries, and took several years to come to fruition, resulting in common eligibility requirements. The Three Presidents' Agreement agreement of January 1923 covered financial arrangements, scouting, and scholarships, amongst other things. In 1926 there was a disagreement between Harvard and Princeton, that caused a hiatus in the Big Three that lasted for 8 years.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Synnott, Marsha G. The “Big Three” and the Harvard-Princeton Football Break, 1926-1934; see also Harvard-Yale-Princeton.
  2. ^ Baltzell, E. Digby (1996). Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia. Transaction Publishers. 156000830X. (p. 249, "the three major upper-class institutions...")
  3. ^ Google Book and Google search engine searches find that 75% of mentions are in the order "Harvard, Yale and Princeton", and 25% are in the order "Harvard, Princeton and Yale", with no other order having any significant number of matches. Quotations naming them in this order abound: "The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton;" Archer, William, America Today, Observations and Reflections America Today, available freely at Project Gutenberg, Letter VI, "St. Gaudens... was... the bearer of honorary degrees from the universities of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton;" Cox, Kenyon (1914), Artist and Public and Other Essay on Art Subjects {{{name}}}, available freely at Project Gutenberg, "Fewer scions of socially prominent families are taking the traditional academic road to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton." Trumbull, Robert (1964), "Gifted Displacing Rich at Ivy 'Big 3'", The New York Times, March 14, 1964, p. 25
  4. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1899) The Rough Riders, The Rough Riders, available freely at Project Gutenberg
  5. ^ Lieber, Francis, E. (Edward) Wigglesworth, T. G. (Thomas Gamaliel) Bradford) (1833). Encyclopædia Americana: A Popular Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, History, Politics. Carey, Lea and Carey. p. 247: "The College of New Jersey at Princeton has long and justly maintained a high reputation, and numbers among its alumni many of the most eminent men of the Union, especially in the Southern States."[1]
  6. ^ Burt, Nathaniel [1963] (1999). The Perennial Philadelphians: The Anatomy of an American Aristocracy. University of Pennsylvania Press. 0812216938. (p. 86, "...the Big Three and a Local Favorite...")
  7. ^ Karabel, Jerome (2005). The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Houghton Mifflin. 0818574581. (p. 562, note 19, citing Kenneth Davis, FDR, p. 135, re the Harvard president's list)
  8. ^ Story, Ronald (1980), The Forging of an Aristocracy: Harvard and the Boston Upper Class, 1800-1870, Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0-8195-5044-2 (p. 97, (1815-1855 as the era when Harvard began to be perceived as socially advantageous)
  9. ^ Baltzell, E. Digby (1964). The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. Yale University Press. 0300038186. (p. 209, "...proper college degree became the main criterion...")
  10. ^ Karabel, op. cit, Part I, The Origins of Selective Admissions, 1900-1933
  11. ^ Thompson, Nicholas (2003): "The Best, The Top, The Most;" The New York Times, August 3, 2003, Education Life Supplement, p. 24
  12. ^ All facts in this section from the Wikipedia articles Harvard, Yale, and Princeton unless otherwise noted

[edit] See also

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