<p>I'm sorry this has to be my first post on College Confidential after reading thousands of threads...but I can't help asking this! (also posted in the Yale forum because I could not find a place to post a general Ivy League question.) </p>
<p>I'm watching a webinar by a Princeton graduate named Carol Barash who runs a big college application support website called Story2College. She just announced that the Ivy league used to be an athletic conference but now is a group of 10 colleges which includes Stanford and MIT. Verbatim: "...the current Ivy league, it does include Stanford and MIT as well as....(lists other 8)." Then she put a slide up with the insignias of all ten colleges - the eight original plus Stanford and MIT. </p>
<p>Stanford moving the the Pac-12 to the Ivy League would result in losing its various traditional rivalries while increasing the distance its sports teams must travel for in-conference games. Don’t see why it would want to do such a thing.</p>
<p>No, the Ivy League has not expanded to 10 colleges. An interesting factoid is that the only college to be invited to join the Ivy League and decline was Rutgers.</p>
<p>@DrGoogle, obviously I wouldn’t have asked if I ‘knew’ the answer. My post stated my inquiry exactly. I was under the impression that ‘A’ was true. An expert whom I respect stated ‘not A but B’ is true, in a multi-media presentation on the internet. This website seemed like a good place to come and get the facts straight. Why the need for sarcasm and rudeness? Those responses along with the BIG RED WARNING aren’t a very friendly welcome to your community. </p>
<p>Thank you to @Falcon1 and @ucbalumnus for helpful responses and clarification. </p>
<p>No sarcasm and rudeness intended but from you post you seem to know enough to doubt and ask. You wrote 8 instead of 10 so my guess was you had an inclination it was not correct. I tend to be brief in my comment. Tired finger syndrome.</p>
<p>If you doubted the information you were given, you could have done a quick google search to confirm. The Ivy League is a sports league. Not every elite college in the US is an Ivy League school. </p>
<p>Carol Barash! I love her and always recommend her book, Write Out Loud for the college essay. Surprised she would make a mistake like that, since she went to Yale and Princeton and that’s not a small mistake – and her audience is uninformed HS freshmen through juniors. I don’t like the way her website is going anyway with their new essay ‘toolkit’. You can’t write a college essay with a template. It’s a terrible idea. Sorry OT.
You’ll be happy to know that you were right @LyricalLacuna, and there is an Ivy League forum if you’re interested…</p>
<p>OP, I don’t really understand some of the responses here, either. I read your question as one of incredulity, not naivete. After listening to that portion of the recording myself, I, too, am incredulous. “The Ivies started in the '50s” ? “The current Ivy league, it does include Stanford and MIT…” LOL Why in the world would anyone believe a word this woman utters after such an introduction? Are you sure she went to Princeton? I’m going to have to look her up. I’ve never heard of her or the site, but I assume people pay her for her “well-informed opinions and services”? It’s no wonder that there has been a sudden influx of people posting on CC about Stanford being in the Ivy League. It all makes so much sense, now. I wonder how many other “experts” are out there spreading similar information? My guess is more than a few.</p>
<p>The real question is why anyone cares whether two elite institutions like MIT and Stanford are said to be in in the Ivy League or not. From the perspective of a student determining where to apply, It’s a meaningless categorization. Some Ivy League schools will be ideal for a particular student, while others will be poor choices. I can’t imagine a kid being suited to both Columbia and Dartmouth, for example. That same student will find many superlative options outside of the Ivy League. From what I’ve seen here on CC, it’s the least knowledgeable and most naive students and parents who get hung up on the “Ivy” designation. When a post starts off “I want to go to an Ivy League school” I know the student hasn’t done any homework on college selection. </p>
<p>Why wouldn’t a kid be attracted to both Columbia and Dartmouth, MommaJ? If a kid does not care about the surroundings (urban versus small town) and really just wants an outstanding peer group and small classes with low faculty to student ratio, strong research, and good support system, both places offer that. </p>
<p>Exactly, @MommaJ . I only watched about four minutes of the video–just enough to learn that the “10” Ivies “started in the '50s”. But I think her entire presentation was about how to get into “The Ivies”, though it was very confusing that she spent a bit of time and a slide telling people not to choose “an Ivy”, then proceeded, presumably, to spend the rest of her time telling people how to get into “an Ivy”. It’s sort of like “Kleenex”. “Ivy” has become a generic term to mean highly-ranked or prestigious school. I got an email yesterday from a sweet girl I know with college-educated parents who told me she was applying to all of the Ivies. She thought it was like the UC schools–one app and you’re done–and was trying to figure out how to apply to all of them at once because she thought that was what her counselor had told her to do. So much misinformation out there. That’s understandable. But people shouldn’t have to pay for misinformation from people who market themselves as “in the know”. Very frustrating.</p>
<p>@happykidsmom, thank you so much for understanding the tone and content of my question! I was starting to feel like a crazy person. I am not personally interested in Ivy League colleges, and the discussion has nothing to do with anyone idealizing Ivy League schools, individually or as a conference, or about the Ivy league as a bastion of elitism ( or not). The question was expressing incredulity about information (?!) being disseminated (and paid for) and going unchecked on the internet. The webinar in question is over a year old and who knows how many kids have watched it and ‘learned’ as @happykidsmom noted that the Ivy League was established in the 1950’s and now includes Stanford and MIT. It would actually be very interesting and more than a little disruptive if Stanford and MIT left their respective athletic conferences to compete in Ivy athletics instead. Not at all meaningless. And apparently many of the kids who use the story2college prep materials are now on college confidential believing in the 10 school Ivy conference. Do facts matter? </p>
<p>@DiscipulusBonus, I agree completely, that her product has become a travesty. I loved her early work when she just did the Write out Loud stuff many years ago in NYC, before there was story2college. But once she got a staff and started creating these templates and toolkits, it became a moneymaker and is no longer about really good storytelling. Or maybe it is about story telling…such as the story of the 10 college Ivy League lol! </p>