Ivy League

The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference, comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term Ivy League is typically used outside sports to refer to the eight schools as a group of elite colleges with connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism. Its members are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. The conference headquarters are in Princeton, New Jersey.

The term was used as early as 1933; it became official only after the formation of the athletic conference in 1954. All of the "Ivies" except Cornell were founded during the colonial period; they are seven of the nine colonial colleges, those chartered before the American Revolution, and (except for Cornell and Brown) they maintained all-male colleges (at least for undergraduates or in some programs) until the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. The other two colonial colleges, Rutgers University and the College of William & Mary, became public institutions.