Ivy League Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising sports teams from eight private universities in the Northeastern United States. The term "Ivy League" is typically used to refer to those eight schools as a group of elite colleges beyond the sports context. The eight members are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. "Ivy League" has connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism. While the term was in use as early as 1933, it became official only after the formation of
Ivy League founding boards were largely drawn from other Ivy League institutions. There were also some British graduates from the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the University of St. Andrews, the University of Edinburgh, and elsewhere on their boards. Similarly, the founder of The College of William & Mary, in 1693, was a British graduate of the University of Edinburgh. Cornell provided Stanford University with its first president. The influence of these institutions on the founding of other colleges and universities is notable. This included the Southern public college movement which blossomed in the decades surrounding the turn of the