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The '''Ivy League''' is a group of the [[United States]]'s eight most highly respected universities. Seven of the eight are also the first seven institutions of higher learning founded in the United States. Its members include [[Harvard University]], [[Yale University]], [[Columbia University]], [[Dartmouth University]], [[Brown University]], [[University of Pennsylvania]], [[Princeton University]], and [[Cornell University]]. Cornell is the university that was founded much later than the others.

The '''Ivy League''' is an athletic conference of eight private universities in the Northeast; during the first half of the 1900s they played each other frequently, and by the 1930s were informally referred informally as the "Ivy League," but the organization was not formalized until 1954.

 

By extension, the term also refers to the eight schools considered as a group, and to social characteristics perceived to be common to the group. The schools of the Ivy League are all old—all but Cornell having been founded before the American Revolution. The are all academically excellent, and all of them have a traditional connection with social prestige. Six of them were founded as Protestant institutions (Penn and Cornell were founded as nondenominational).

 

Its members include [[Harvard University]], [[Yale University]], [[Columbia University]], [[Dartmouth University]], [[Brown University]], [[University of Pennsylvania]], [[Princeton University]], and [[Cornell University]].