Ivy League proportion of students. In the most recent academic year, seven of the eight Ivy League schools reported record-high application numbers; seven also reported record-low acceptance rates. Members of the League have been highly ranked by various university rankings. In addition to the broad rankings listed in the accompanying chart, several Ivy League schools are highly ranked in the current "2018 US News & World Report" assessment of Best Undergraduate Teaching: 1. Princeton; 2. Dartmouth; 3. Brown; 10. Yale. The "Wall Street Journal" rankings place all eight of the universities within the top 20 in the country. Further, Ivy League members
Ivy League was formally designated as "Ivy Day" in 1874. Ivy planting ceremonies are reported for Yale, Simmons, Bryn Mawr and many others. Princeton's "Ivy Club" was founded in 1879. The first usage of "Ivy" in reference to a group of colleges is from sportswriter Stanley Woodward (1895–1965). The first known instance of the term "Ivy League" being used appeared in "The Christian Science Monitor" on February 7, 1935. Several sportswriters and other journalists used the term shortly later to refer to the older colleges, those along the northeastern seaboard of the United States, chiefly the nine institutions with origins dating from