New England out of eight Ivy League schools, New England contains the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Tufts University, four of the original Seven Sisters, the bulk of educational institutions that are identified as the "Little Ivies", one of the eight original Public Ivies, the Colleges of Worcester Consortium in central Massachusetts, and the Five Colleges consortium in western Massachusetts. The University of Maine, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Connecticut, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of Rhode Island, and the University of Vermont are the flagship state universities in the region. At the pre-college level, New
Geology of Rhode Island Pleistocene glaciations. The state's geology is part of the broader geology of New England. Rhode Island is divided into two distinct physiographic regions. The Eastern Highlands occupy the northwestern interior of the state, near the state line with Connecticut while the majority of the state's land area is grouped with the larger Atlantic Coastal Plain that extends along the eastern seaboard of the US. Rhode Island is the only state in New England formed entirely atop basement rock from the microcontinent Avalonia. The bedrock of Rhode Island first took shape with the emergence of a volcanic arc near a subduction