Ivy League Schools

Ivy League Schools are commonly generalized as eight athletic associated private institutions of higher education located in the Northeastern part of the United States and are considered to be of academic excellence having a reputation for social elitism.  They are also known to be very selective in the admissions.

The term “Ivy League” became very well known throughout the years especially in sports terminology, after the creation of the NCAA Division I athletic convention founded in 1954. 

Princeton University comments that “the phrase is no longer limited to athletics, and now represents an educational philosophy inherent to the nation's oldest schools."
 
Ivy league schools are always at the top of the  U.S. News & World Report College and University rankings (published annually).   They rank within the top one percent of the world's academic institutions in terms of financial endowment as well.

Ivy league endowments are typically in the billions of dollars, enabling these venerable institutions to provide unparalleled research support for faculty.  These schools also offer excellent infrastructure and facilities to their students, not to mention contact with top scholars in every field. Their large endowments also enable them to offer excellent financial aid to poor students (usually known as “need-blind”) admissions.  Some Ivy league institutions even offer free tuition to qualifying students, usually those whose families make less than $40,000 per year.

Ivy League Schools include Brown University located in Providence, Rhode Island, Princeton University located in Princeton, New Jersey, Harvard University located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cornell University located in Ithaca, New York, Columbia University located in New York, New York, University of Pennsylvania located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, located in Hanover, New Hampshire and Yale University located in New Haven, Connecticut.

Seven of the eight Ivy League Schools were started during America’s colonial period; Cornell, however, was founded in 1865. Ivy League Schools, therefore, are considered to be seven of the nine Colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The Ivy League Schools are all privately owned and operated. Even though many of them receive funding from the federal or state governments to pursue research, Cornell is the only one that has state-supported academic divisions, which are termed "statutory" or "contract" colleges, that are an essential division of the organization.

Ivy League Schools have an Undergraduate enrollment that range from about 4,000 to 14,000 students resulting in these schools being larger than those of usual private liberal arts colleges; yet the enrollment is smaller than a typical public state university.