The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference of eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. It participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I, and in football, in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). 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. At times, they have also been referred to as the "Ancient Eight".
The eight members of the Ivy League are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. The conference headquarters is 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, Queen's College (now Rutgers University) and the College of William & Mary, became public institutions.
Overview Ivy League schools are some of the most prestigious universities in the world. All eight universities place in the top 15 of the 2025 U.S. News & World Report National Universities ranking. U.S. News has named a member of the Ivy League as the best national university every year since 2001: , Princeton eleven times, Harvard twice, and the two schools tied for first five times.
In the 2024–2025 U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking, six Ivies rank in the top 20: Harvard (#1), Columbia (#9), Yale (#10), Penn (#14), Princeton (#18), and Cornell (#19)—ranks that U.S. News says are based on "indicators that measure their academic research performance and their global and regional reputations." All eight Ivy League schools are members of the Association of American Universities, the most prestigious alliance of American research universities.
Undergraduate enrollments range from about 4,500 to about 15,000, larger than most liberal arts colleges and smaller than most state university systems. Total enrollment, which includes graduate students, ranges from approximately 6,600 at Dartmouth to over 20,000 at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Penn. Ivy League financial endowments range from Brown's $6.9 billion to Harvard's $53.2 billion, the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world.
The Ivy League is similar to other groups of universities in other countries, such as Oxbridge in England, the C9 League in China, the Écoles Normales Supérieures in France, the SKY Universities in South Korea, and the Imperial Universities in Japan.
Members Ivy League universities have some of the largest university financial endowments in the world, allowing the universities to provide abundant resources for their academic programs, financial aid, and research endeavors. As of 2021, Harvard University had an endowment of $53.2 billion, the largest of any educational institution. Each university attracts millions of dollars in annual research funding from both the federal government and private sources.
Current schools Institution Location Undergraduates Postgraduates Median earnings EndowmentAs of June 30, 2023. (in $ billions) Academic staff Year founded Team name Colors Brown University Providence, Rhode Island $94,678 $6.20 Bears Columbia University New York City $115,519 $13.64 Lions Cornell University Ithaca, New York $113,372 $10.04 Big Red Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire $111,883 $7.93 943 Big Green Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts $134,794 $49.50 Crimson University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania $124,586 $20.96 Quakers Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey $108,590 $34.06 Tigers Yale University New Haven, Connecticut $112,971 $40.75 Bulldogs
Former affiliate members
Before the 2000s, many of the Ivy League championships for men's and women's cross country, indoor and outdoor track & field, and swimming & diving were formatted as invitationals that many schools across the eastern United States would attend. In other sports, such as fencing, wrestling, men's and women's ice hockey, and men's and women's rowing, all of the Ivy League schools were members of other single-sport conferences and the top-performing Ivy League team would be crowned the champion.
The United States Military Academy and the United States Naval Academy were members of the Ivy League in many sports and were crowned as Ivy League champions while competing with Ivy League teams. Both schools left the conference in the early 2000s to join with their current conference, the Patriot League, except for football, for which they are affiliate members of the American Athletic Conference.
History
Institutional history
Institution Founded as Founded Chartered First instruction Founding affiliationHarvard UniversityHarvard College163616501642Nonsectarian, founded by Calvinist CongregationalistsYale UniversityCollegiate School170117011702Calvinist (Congregationalist)Princeton UniversityCollege of New Jersey174617461747Nonsectarian, founded by Calvinist PresbyteriansColumbia UniversityKing's College175417541754Church of EnglandUniversity of PennsylvaniaCollege of PhiladelphiaSee University of Pennsylvania for details of the circumstances of Penn's origin. Penn considered its founding date to be 1749 for over a century.Penn Trustees 1749-1800; In 1895, elite universities in the United States agreed that henceforth formal academic processions would place visiting dignitaries and other officials in the order of their institution's founding dates. Penn's periodical The Alumni Register, published by the General Alumni Society, then began a grassroots campaign to retroactively revise the university's founding date to 1740. In 1899, the Board of Trustees acceded to the alumni initiative and voted to change the founding date to 1740, the date of foundation for the trust that was used to establish the school, following the usage used by Harvard University. The rationale offered in 1899 was that, in 1750 founder Benjamin Franklin and his original board of trustees purchased a completed but unused building and assumed a trust from a group that had hoped to begin a church and charity school in Philadelphia. This edifice was commonly called the "New Building" by local citizens and was referred to by such name in Franklin's memoirs as well as the legal bill of sale in Penn's archives. No name is stated or known for the associated educational trust, hence "Unnamed Charity School" serves as a placeholder to refer to the trust which is the premise for Penn's association with a founding date of 1740. The first named entity in Penn's early history was the 1751 secondary school for boys and charity school for indigent children called "Academy and Charitable School in the Province of Pennsylvania."Penn's Heritage; Undergraduate education began in 1755 and the organization then changed its name to "College, Academy and Charity School of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania".Penn in the 18th Century; Operation of the charity school was discontinued a few years later.1740 or 1749 or 175517551755Nonsectarian,Penn's website, like other sources, makes an important point of Penn's heritage being nonsectarian, associated with Benjamin Franklin and the Academy of Philadelphia's nonsectarian board of trustees: "The goal of Franklin's nonsectarian, practical plan would be the education of a business and governing class rather than of clergymen."Penn in the 18th Century; . Jencks and Riesman (2001) write "The Anglicans who founded the University of Pennsylvania, however, were evidently anxious not to alienate Philadelphia's Quakers, and they made their new college officially nonsectarian." In Franklin's 1749 founding Proposals relating to the education of youth in Pensilvania ( (page images) ), religion is not mentioned directly as a subject of study, but he states in a footnote that the study of "History will also afford frequent Opportunities of showing the Necessity of a Publick Religion, from its Usefulness to the Publicks; the Advantage of a Religious Character among private Persons; the Mischiefs of Superstition, &c. and the Excellency of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION above all others antient or modern." Starting in 1751, the same trustees also operated a Charity School for Boys, whose curriculum combined "general principles of Christianity" with practical instruction leading toward careers in business and the "mechanical arts." Penn in the 18th Century: Charity School of Philadelphia; , and thus might be described as "non-denominational Christian." The charity school was originally planned and a trust was organized on paper in 1740 by followers of travelling evangelist George Whitefield. The school was to have operated inside a church supported by the same group of adherents. But the organizers ran short of financing and, although the frame of the building was raised, the interior was left unfinished. The founders of the Academy of Philadelphia purchased the unused building in 1750 for their new venture and, in the process, assumed the original trust. Since 1899, Penn has claimed a founding date of 1740, based on the organizational date of the charity school and the premise that it had institutional identity with the Academy of Philadelphia. Whitefield was a firebrand Methodist associated with The Great Awakening; since the Methodists did not formally break from the Church of England until 1784, Whitefield in 1740 would be labeled Episcopalian, and in fact Brown University, emphasizing its own pioneering nonsectarianism, refers to Penn's origin as "Episcopalian".Brown's climate of openness and cooperation can be traced back to its founding over two centuries ago. . Penn is sometimes assumed to have Quaker ties (its athletic teams are called "Quakers," and the cross-registration alliance between Penn, Haverford, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr is known as the "Quaker Consortium.") But Penn's website does not assert any formal affiliation with Quakerism, historic or otherwise, and Haverford College implicitly asserts a non-Quaker origin for Penn when it states that "Founded in 1833, Haverford is the oldest institution of higher learning with Quaker roots in North America." founded by Church of England/Methodist membersBrown UniversityCollege in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations176417641765Hoeveler, David J., Creating the American Mind: Intellect and Politics in the Colonial Colleges, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, p. 192Baptist, founding charter promises "no religious tests" and "full liberty of conscience"Brown's charter stated that "into this liberal and catholic institution shall never be admitted any religious tests, but on the contrary, all the members hereof shall forever enjoy full, free, absolute, and uninterrupted liberty of conscience." The charter called for twenty-two of the thirty-six trustees to be Baptists, but required that the remainder be "five Friends, four Congregationalists, and five Episcopalians." Brown's website characterizes it as "the Baptist answer to Congregationalist Yale and Harvard; Presbyterian Princeton; and Episcopalian Penn and Columbia," but adds that at the time it was "the only one that welcomed students of all religious persuasions." Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth College176917691769Calvinist (Congregationalist)Cornell UniversityCornell University186518651868Nonsectarian