Ivy League

The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference of eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term Ivy League is used more broadly to refer to the eight schools that belong to the league, which are globally-renowned as elite colleges associated with academic excellence, highly selective admissions, and social elitism. The term was used as early as 1933, and it became official in 1954 following the formation of the Ivy League athletic conference.

The eight members of the Ivy League are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. The conference headquarters are in Princeton, New Jersey. All of the "Ivies" except Cornell were founded during the colonial period and therefore make up seven of the nine colonial colleges. The other two colonial colleges, Rutgers University and the College of William & Mary, became public institutions.