The Big Three, also known as the Holy Trinity, is a historical term used in the United States to refer to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. 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 that predates the Ivy League. The schools continue to refer to their intercollegiate competitions as "Big Three" or "Harvard-Yale-Princeton" meets.
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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 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. | ” |
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—Theodore Roosevelt, 1899.[4] |
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Of the three, Princeton University was traditionally the preferred choice of the Southern upper class.[5]
Nathaniel 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 included 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.”
The actual academic quality of these three colleges is often a subject of debate. Nonetheless, in August 2010, U.S. News & World Report ranked Harvard, Yale, and Princeton as the top three institutions in the National Colleges and Universities category.[11]
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, a certain lack in economic diversity persists at the three colleges. 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."[12] | ” |
More recently, Yale,[13] Princeton[14] and Harvard[15][16] instituted no-loan financial aid policies which provide students with need-based aid from private funds held by the universities. This enables greater attendance from the poorer classes than Pell Grant statistics would indicate, since many recipients of university grants do not receive Pell Grants.
The three colleges, when named together, are often named in the order Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.[3] This happens to be the order in which they were founded—1636, 1701, and 1746, respectively.[17] Founding date is an important point of institutional pride, since it governs the order in which the institutions march in academic processions.
Harvard also has the largest student body, with Yale second, and Princeton third with its small graduate school. Harvard also has the largest endowment of the three, Yale the second largest, and Princeton the smallest ; however, Princeton has the largest endowment per capita of any school in the world.
Harvard-Yale-Princeton (variously HYP or the Big Three) was 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.