The "Ivy League" Isn't What You Think
Ivy League schools are academically prestigious universities, but that doesn't mean students should focus just on the Ivies.
“My goal is the Ivy League.”
“We really want our kid to get into an Ivy League school.”
“The Ivy League is what any student should want.”
After over a decade-and-a-half in and around admissions, I hate those sentiments. This is not because Ivy League schools are bad. It’s because that mode of thinking is all wrong. It is as though “Ivy” or “Ivy League” bestows a certain kind of credential on a school. The “Ivy League,” by this reckoning, is some unified whole where the school experience is interchangeable between Ivy League schools. Or that somehow “Ivy League” schools are somehow better than all others simply because they are Ivy League.
The Ivy League is, first and foremost, an athletic conference. Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale share more than an athletic affiliation, but this is what truly divides an Ivy from a non-Ivy. What makes a school an Ivy is that they play the other seven in sports. MIT, NYU, Northwestern, and many other really excellent schools are not “Ivy League” simply as a matter of sports. It has nothing to do with their academic quality.
Of course, the Ivy League schools are among the most well-regarded and highest ranked universities in America. Every Ivy League school makes the US News and World Report’s Best Colleges rankings in the top 20. For what that’s worth. They are also all extremely selective in admissions.
The Ivy League also features seven of the nine “Colonial Colleges,” schools founded before the American Revolution. The only Ivy founded after the nation is Cornell. Rutgers and William & Mary, who both became public institutions, are the other two Colonial Colleges. Being public institutions is part of why they were never added to the Ivy League. The Ivy League chose its members for particular reasons. For one, they were already playing each other in sports. The Ivy League’s official founding in 1954 was more of a formal arrangement of existing sporting relationships.
“Ivy League” also has a strong cultural prestige, because of the academic prestige of the eight schools. Ivy League fashion is a descriptor for a certain kind of preppy look. An Ivy League haircut is a close-cropped men’s cut that is a standard shorter option. Both got their names because they were what well-heeled college students in the postwar era looked like, and “Ivy League” was long synonymous with “top college in America.” It still is.
Still, there is just nothing about the Ivy League that should make someone think “I would like to apply to all the Ivies.” The eight schools have some similarities, but will provide very different college experiences. Brown, Columbia, Harvard, and Penn are in the middle of large cities. Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Yale are in more traditional college towns. Yale has residential colleges, which form their own communities on campus. Columbia has Barnard, a separate women’s college, semi-integrated into its larger community. The experience of going to each Ivy League college is different from going to the others.
The “Ivy League” isn’t a mass of institutions all churning out the same high-quality programs. They are all unique–as is any other college in America. Thinking “We need to get into an Ivy” is the wrong way to go about applying. An Ivy League school can be the perfect college for a student. The entire Ivy League cannot be THE perfect college.
Takeaways
Name, reputation, and rankings should only be a first step to finding out about schools.
“It’s a good school” or “It’s highly ranked” is NOT a reason to apply to a school.
Applying to “All 8 Ivy League schools” is too much for anyone to manage, and it does not increase the odds of “getting into an Ivy League school.”
Always make the classes, majors, programs, professors, clubs, activities, or experiences at a campus the reason WHY you are applying to a school.
Your excitement about a school should be clear in your application, so that application readers can be excited about you.
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