page_title: Ivy League
section_title: History of the athletic league
hierarchical_section_title: Ivy League / History / History of the athletic league
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Yale's four-oared crew team, posing with the trophy for the 1876 Centennial Regatta, won at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Image courtesy of the Yale University Manuscripts &amp; Archives Digital Images Database. Retouched by MarmadukePercy.
context_page_description: The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private universities in the Northeastern United States. The term Ivy League is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools as a group of elite colleges with connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism. Its members are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University.
  While the term was in use as early as 1933, it became official only after the formation of the NCAA Division I athletic conference in 1954. All of the Ivies except Cornell were founded during the colonial period; they thus account for seven of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The other two colonial colleges, Rutgers University and the College of William & Mary, became public institutions instead.
  Ivy League schools are viewed as some of the most prestigious universities in the world. All eight universities place in the top 17 of the 2020 U.S.
caption: Yale University's four-oared crew team, posing with the 1876 Centennial Regatta trophy.
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