Ivy League Group Agreement to all intercollegiate sports, effective with the 1955–56 basketball season. This is generally reckoned as the formal formation of the Ivy League. As part of the transition, Brown, the only Ivy that hadn't joined the EIBL, did so for the 1954–55 season. A year later, the Ivy League absorbed the EIBL. The Ivy League claims the EIBL's history as its own. Through the EIBL, it is the oldest basketball conference in Division I. 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
Ivy League university Additionally, each university receives millions of dollars in research grants and other subsidies from federal and state governments. Students have long revered the ivied walls of older colleges. "Planting the ivy" was a customary class day ceremony at many colleges in the 1800s. In 1893, an alumnus told "The Harvard Crimson", "In 1850, class day was placed upon the University Calendar. ... the custom of planting the ivy, while the ivy oration was delivered, arose about this time." At Penn, graduating seniors started the custom of planting ivy at a university building each spring in 1873 and that practice