Ivy League

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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. The term is now also commonly used to refer to those eight schools considered as a group. The term has connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and a reputation for social elitism.

The term became ubiquitous, especially in sports terminology, after the formation of the NCAA Division I athletic conference founded in 1954, when much of the nation polarized around favorite college teams. The use of the phrase to refer to these schools as a group is widespread; Princeton notes that "the phrase is no longer limited to athletics, and now represents an educational philosophy inherent to the nation's oldest schools."^[1]

All of the Ivy institutions share some general characteristics: they consistently place within the top 15 in the U.S. News & World Report 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. 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 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 colleges, that are an integral part of the institution.

Undergraduate enrollments among the Ivy League schools vary considerably, ranging from 4,085 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. Ivy-League university financial endowments range from Brown's $2.3 billion, the 26th-largest endowment of any U.S. college or university, to Harvard's $29.2 billion, the largest financial endowment of any academic institution.

Contents 1 Members 2 Origin of the name 3 Before there was an Ivy League 4 History of the athletic league 5 Reputation 5.1 Social elitism 6 Co-operation 7 Athletics & competition 7.1 Athletic teams 7.2 Conference facilities 8 Clothing style 9 Other "Ivies" 10 Championships 10.1 Football 11 See also 12 Notes 13 External links

[edit] Members

Institution	Location	Athletic Nickname	Founding religious affiliation	Full-time enrollment	Founded
Brown University	Providence, Rhode Island	Bears	Baptist[2]	7,744 [10]	1764 as College of Rhode Island
Columbia University	New York, New York	Lions	Anglican	19,694 [11]	1754 as King's College
Cornell University	Ithaca, New York	Big Red	Nonsectarian	20,400 [12]	1865
Dartmouth College	Hanover, New Hampshire	Big Green	Congregationalist	5,753 [13]	1769
Harvard University[3]	Cambridge, Massachusetts	Crimson	Congregationalist; sided with the Unitarians in their 1825 split from Congregationalists	20,042 [14]	1636, but named Harvard College in 1638
Princeton University	Princeton, New Jersey	Tigers	Nonsectarian, but founded by Presbyterians[4]	6,677 [15]	1746 as College of New Jersey
University of Pennsylvania	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	Quakers	Nonsectarian,[5] but founded by Episcopalians[6][7]	19,771 [16]	1740[8]
Yale University	New Haven, Connecticut	Bulldogs	Congregationalist	11,483 [17]	1701 as Collegiate School

Note Founding dates and religious affiliations are those stated by the institution itself. Many of them had complex histories in their early years and the stories of their origins are subject to interpretation. See footnotes for details where appropriate. "Religious affiliation" refers to financial sponsorship, formal association with, and promotion by, a religious denomination. All of the schools in the Ivy League are private and not currently associated with any religion.

[edit] Origin of the name

The first usage of "Ivy League" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from a sports-writer in 1933. Several sports-writers and other journalists of the era used it to refer to the older colleges, those along the northeastern seaboard of the United States, chiefly the nine institutions with origins dating from the colonial era, together with the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Naval Academy, and a few others. These schools were known for their long-standing traditions in intercollegiate athletics, often being the first schools to participate in such activities. However, at this time, none of these institutions would make efforts to form an athletic league.

The Ivy League's name derives from the ivy plants, symbolic of their age, that cover many of these institutions' historic buildings. The Ivy League universities are also called the "Ancient Eight" or simply the Ivies.

A common folk etymology attributes the name to the Roman numerals for four (IV), asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins helped to perpetuate this belief. The supposed "IV League" was formed over a century ago and consisted of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a 4th school that varies depending on who is telling the story.^[9][10][11]

However, representatives from four schools, Rutgers, Princeton, Yale and Columbia met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan on 19 October 1873 to establish a set of rules governing their intercollegiate athletic competition, and particularly to codify the new game of college football (which at the time, largely resembled what is presently called soccer). Though invited, Harvard chose not to attend. While no formal organization or conference was established, the results of this meeting governed athletic events between these schools well into the twentieth century.^[12][13]

[edit] Before there was an Ivy League

Seven of the Ivy League schools are older than the American Revolution; Cornell was founded just after the American Civil War. These seven provided the overwhelming majority of the higher education in the Northern and Middle Colonies; their early faculties and founding boards were largely, therefore, drawn from other Ivy League institutions; there were also some British graduates - more from the University of Cambridge than Oxford, but also from the University of Edinburgh and elsewhere. The founders of Rutgers, in 1766, were largely Ivy; and so for many of the colleges formed after the Revolution.

Most of these seven schools were more or less Congregationalist or Presbyterian in denomination; Anglican King's College broke up in the Revolution, and was reformed as public non-sectarian Columbia College. In the early nineteenth century, the specific purpose of training Calvinist ministers was handed off to theological seminaries; but a denominational tone, and such relics as compulsory chapel, often lasted well into the twentieth century. Cornell has always been strongly non-sectarian, partly as a reaction to this.

"Ivy League" therefore also became, like WASP, a way of referring to this elite, and elitist, class. This sense^[14] dates back to at least 1935.^[15] Novels^[16] and memoirs^[17] attest this sense, as a social elite; to some degree independent of the actual schools.

After the Second World War, the present Ivy League institutions slowly widened their selection of students. They had always had distinguished faculties; some of the first Americans with doctorates had taught for them; but they now decided that they could not both be world-class research institutions and be competitive in the highest ranks of American college sport; in addition, the schools experienced the scandals of any other big-time football programs, although more quietly.^[18]

[edit] History of the athletic league

The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. 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) and Navy (the United States Naval Academy) were considered members, but dropped out shortly before formal organization. For instance, Army traditionally had a rivalry with Yale, and Rutgers had rivalries with Princeton and Columbia, which continue today in sports other than football.

Before the formal establishment 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.^[19]

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.^[20]

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.^[21] 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. The seven colleges involved fall naturally together by reason of their common interests and similar general standards and by dint of their established national reputation they are in a particularly advantageous position to assume leadership for the preservation of the ideals of intercollegiate athletics.^[22]

The proposal did not succeed — on January 11, 1937, the athletic authorities at the schools rejected the "possibility of a heptagonal league in football such as these institutions maintain in basketball, baseball and track." However, they noted that the league "has such promising possibilities that it may not be dismissed and must be the subject of further consideration."^[23]

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. The Ivy Group Agreement established the core tenet that an applicant's ability to play on a team would not influence admissions decisions:

The members of the Group reaffirm their prohibition of athletic scholarships. 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.^{[citation needed]}

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. The College of William and Mary, founded in 1693, and Rutgers University, founded as Queen's College in 1766, both public universities, are the only institutions among the nine colonial colleges not included. Cornell University, founded in 1865, is the only Ivy member that was founded after the American Revolutionary War.

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 are adjacent 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. As noted by Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra, "the 'Seven Sisters' was the name given to Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Radcliffe, because of their parallel to the Ivy League men’s colleges."^[24]

[edit] Reputation

All Ivy League schools are known for their highly selective undergraduate programs, and acceptance rates now range from 9.0% for Harvard^[25] to 24.7% for Cornell.^[26]

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 some fourteen times to view the admissions status of cross-applicants, using the names, birthdates, and social security numbers indicated on their Princeton applications; Princeton later asserted that it had been considering a similar system of early internet notification, and was surprised to find that Yale had used no password besides the Social Security number. 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, though Princeton president Shirley Tilghman said that the dean's decision to retire was unconnected to the incident.^[27]

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. At these multi-day conferences, student representatives from each school meet to discuss issues facing their respective institutions, with a variety of topics ranging from financial aid to gender-neutral housing.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Social elitism

The phrase Ivy League historically has been perceived as connected, not only with academic excellence, but also with social elitism. In 1936, sportwriter John Kieran noted that student editors at Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Penn, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and Cornell University were advocating the formation of an athletic association. In urging them to consider "Army and Navy and Georgetown and Fordham and Syracuse and Brown and Pitt" as candidates for membership, he exhorted:

It would be well for the proponents of the Ivy League to make it clear (to themselves especially) that the proposed group would be inclusive but not "exclusive" as this term is used with a slight up-tilting of the tip of the nose.^[28]

The Ivy League was specifically associated with the WASP establishment.^[29] Phrases such as "Ivy League snobbery"^[30] are ubiquitous in nonfiction and fiction writing of the twentieth century. A Louis Auchincloss character dreads "the aridity of snobbery which he knew infected the Ivy League colleges".^[31] A business writer, warning in 2001 against discriminatory hiring, presented a cautionary example of an attitude to avoid (the bracketed phrase is his):

"We Ivy Leaguers [read: mostly white and Anglo] know that an Ivy League degree is a mark of the kind of person who is likely to succeed in this organization."^[32]

Aspects of Ivy stereotyping were illustrated during the 1988 presidential election, when George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis (graduate of Harvard Law School) for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique."^[33] New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd asked "Wasn't this a case of the pot calling the kettle elite?" Bush explained however that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it.... Harvard boutique to me has the connotation of liberalism and elitism" and said Harvard in his remark was intended to represent "a philosophical enclave" and not a statement about class.^[34]. Columnist Russell Baker opined that "Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets."^[35]

[edit] Co-operation

Seven of the eight schools (Harvard excluded) participate in the Borrow Direct interlibrary loan program, making a total of 88 million items available to participants with a waiting period of four working days.^[36] This ILL program is not affiliated with the formal Ivy arrangement.

The governing body of the Ivy League is the Ivy Council of Presidents. During their meetings, the presidents often discuss common procedures and initiatives.

[edit] Athletics & competition

Ivy champions are recognized 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 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.

Harvard and Yale are celebrated football and crew rivals. Princeton and Penn are longstanding men's basketball rivals^[37] and "Puck Fenn" and "Puck Frinceton" t-shirts are worn at games.^[38] In only six instances in the last 51 years (from the 1955-56 season through the 2005-06 season) has neither Penn nor Princeton won at least a share of the Ivy League title in basketball,^[39] with Princeton champion or co-champion 25 times and Penn champion or co-champion 24 times. Penn has won 20 outright, Princeton 18 outright, and 4 out of the 7 times Princeton has been a co-champion (and all of the four times Penn has been a co-champion), the other champion was Penn or Princeton. 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^[40]), 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^[41]). In addition, no team other than Harvard and Princeton has won the men's swimming conference title since 1972, with Harvard winning the 34 year series 19-15 as of 2006.

Unlike most Division I athletic conferences, the Ivy League prohibits the granting of athletic scholarships; all scholarships awarded are need-based (financial aid).^[42] Ivy League teams out of league games are usually against the members of the Patriot League which have similar academic standards and athletic scholarship policies. Its members include American, Army, Bucknell, Colgate, Holy Cross, Lafayette College, Lehigh University and Navy.

In the time before recruiting for college sports became dominated by those offering athletic scholarships and lowered academic standards for athletes, 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 11. 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. Currently Dartmouth holds the record for most Ivy League football titles, with 17.

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. One such example is rowing. All of the Ivies have historically been among the top crews in the nation, and most continue to be so today. (Other historical top crews include Cal, Washington,Wisconsin and Navy). Most recently, on the men's side, Harvard won the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships in 2003, 2004, 2005, and on the women's side, Harvard and Brown won the 2003 and 2004 NCAA Rowing Championships, respectively. The Ivy League schools are also very competitive in both men's and women's hockey.

The Ivy League is home to some of the oldest college rugby teams. These teams meet annually to compete in a tourney. The 2006 Ivy League Tournament was hosted by Yale, and the 2005 tournament was hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.

[edit] Athletic teams

• Brown Bears
• Columbia Lions
• Cornell Big Red
• Dartmouth Big Green
• Harvard Crimson
• Penn Quakers
• Princeton Tigers
• Yale Bulldogs

[edit] Conference facilities

School[43]	Football stadium		Basketball arena		Ice hockey rink		Soccer stadium
	Name	Capacity	Name	Capacity	Name	Capacity	Name	Capacity
Brown	Brown Stadium	20,000	Pizzitola Sports Center	2,800	Meehan Auditorium	3,100	Stevenson Field	3,500
Columbia	Wien Stadium	17,000	Levien Gymnasium	3,408	N/A		Columbia Soccer Stadium	3,500
Cornell	Schoellkopf Field	25,597	Newman Arena	4,473	Lynah Rink	3,836	Charles F. Berman Field	1,000
Dartmouth	Memorial Field	13,000	Leede Arena	2,100	Thompson Arena	5,000	Scully-Fahey Fields	1,500
Harvard	Harvard Stadium	30,898	Lavietes Pavilion	2,195	Bright Hockey Center	2,850	Ohiri Field	1,500
Penn	Franklin Field	52,593	The Palestra	8,722	The Class of 1923 Arena	2,900	Rhodes Field	~700
Princeton	Princeton Stadium	27,800	Jadwin Gymnasium	6,854	Hobey Baker Memorial Rink	2,094	Lourie-Love Field	2,000
Yale	Yale Bowl	64,269	Payne Whitney Gym	3,100	Ingalls Rink	3,486	Reese Stadium	3,000

[edit] 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. The clothing store J. Press represents perhaps the quintessential Ivy League dress manner, with two of its four locations found at Harvard and Yale University. It is epitomized by the sack suit which is defined as being a 3-to-2 blazer without darts and a single vent. The pants are cuffed without pleats. It was also characterized by the use of natural fabrics, shirts with button-down collars, and penny loafers. In suits, the Ivy League style was promoted by clothier Brooks Brothers and included natural shoulder single-breasted suit jackets. In 1957 and 1958, about 70% of all suits sold were in the "Ivy League" style.^[44][45][46]

[edit] Other "Ivies"

Marketing groups, journalists, and some educators sometimes promote other colleges as "Ivies," as in Little Ivies; Public Ivies; and Southern Ivies. These uses of "ivy" are intended to promote the other schools by comparing them to the Ivy League, but unlike the "Ivy League" label, they have no canonical definition. For example, in the 2007 edition of Newsweek's How to Get Into College Now, the editors designated twenty-five schools as "New Ivies," some of which— e.g. the four-year-old science-degree-only Olin College—share no characteristics with the Ivy League colleges except a good reputation.^[47]

[edit] Championships

[edit] Football

• 1956 Yale
• 1957 Princeton
• 1958 Dartmouth
• 1959 Pennsylvania
• 1960 Yale
• 1961 Columbia and Harvard
• 1962 Dartmouth
• 1963 Dartmouth and Princeton
• 1964 Princeton
• 1965 Dartmouth
• 1966 Dartmouth, Harvard and Princeton
• 1967 Yale
• 1968 Harvard and Yale
• 1969 Dartmouth, Princeton and Yale
• 1970 Dartmouth
• 1971 Cornell and Dartmouth
• 1972 Dartmouth
• 1973 Dartmouth
• 1974 Harvard and Yale
• 1975 Harvard
• 1976 Brown and Yale
• 1977 Yale
• 1978 Dartmouth
• 1979 Yale
• 1980 Yale
• 1981 Dartmouth and Yale
• 1982 Dartmouth, Harvard and Pennsylvania
• 1983 Harvard and Pennsylvania
• 1984 Pennsylvania
• 1985 Pennsylvania
• 1986 Pennsylvania
• 1987 Harvard
• 1988 Cornell and Pennsylvania
• 1989 Princeton and Yale
• 1990 Cornell and Dartmouth
• 1991 Dartmouth
• 1992 Dartmouth and Princeton
• 1993 Pennsylvania
• 1994 Pennsylvania
• 1995 Princeton
• 1996 Dartmouth
• 1997 Harvard
• 1998 Pennsylvania
• 1999 Brown and Yale
• 2000 Pennsylvania
• 2001 Harvard
• 2002 Pennsylvania
• 2003 Pennsylvania
• 2004 Harvard
• 2005 Brown
• 2006 Princeton and Yale

[edit] See also

• Big Three (universities)—a term used to refer to Harvard, Yale and Princeton
• Colonial colleges—the oldest U. S. colleges, overlaps the Ivy League with the exception of Cornell
• Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence
• Jesuit Ivy—Complimentary use of "Ivy" to characterize Boston College
• Little Ivies—Group of U. S. liberal arts colleges that parallel the Ivy League in some respects
• Patriot League- An athletic conference with similar academic standards and scholarship policies for atheletes. Most out of league play for the Ivy League is with the Patriot League.
• Public Ivies—Group of public U. S. universities thought to "provide an Ivy League collegiate experience at a public school price"
• Seven Sisters—Historically, these were women's colleges each of which had a close tie to an Ivy League school.
• Southern Ivies—Complimentary use of "Ivy" to characterize excellent universities in the U. S. South
• Group of Eight (Australian universities) — a group of leading Australian universities
• Category:University organizations—other groups of universities

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Conference

• IvyLeagueSports.com: Official Home of the Ivy League
  • Ivy League American Football venues
  • Ivy League Basketball venues
  • Ivy League Ice Hockey venues
  • Ivy League Soccer venues
• National Collegiate Athletics Association

Members

• Brown University
• Columbia University
• Cornell University
• Dartmouth College
• Harvard University
• Princeton University
• University of Pennsylvania
• Yale University

The Ivy League
Brown • Columbia • Cornell • Dartmouth • Harvard • Penn • Princeton • Yale

NCAA Division I Championship Subdivision Football Conferences

Atlantic Ten Conference – Big Sky Conference – Big South Conference – Gateway Football Conference – Great West Football Conference – Ivy League Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference – Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference – Northeast Conference – Ohio Valley Conference – Patriot League Pioneer Football League – Southern Conference – Southland Conference – Southwestern Athletic Conference – Independents