<p>ilovebagels, the ivy schools are prestigious whether you like it or not or you agree with me or not. i have this strong vibe that the association of some schools in the league is what made them famous and prestigious. For example, if Brown and Dartmouth aren’t Ivy schools, they probably are just as regarded and respected as Amherst or Swarthmore or maybe less. Replace UPenn with Williams and both schools would have a significant impact on their overall prestige and popularity. </p>
<p>some posters on here have failed to realize that the ivy league is now more of a function of prestige and social class than a sports league. For many people, the Ivy League is a social club for the very elite students. Even the vast majority of the people outside of the US have no idea that the Ivy League is a sports league. For most of them, its an association of 8 very old, very prestigious, very expensive, very wealthy, very well-connected and highly influential schools in the US. That’s also why many of them thought that Stanford, Berkeley and MIT are members of the league, because these schools are insanely prestigious outside the US.</p>
<p>Now, this thread is supposed to create a league that would rival the ivy league in prestige - academic or otherwise - that’s why it’s important that the school composition is studied quite carefully in such a way that they would match the ivies, and that’s why I couldn’t sacrifice those very prestigious schools such as MIT, Berkeley, Caltech and Chicago not being a part of this league that we are creating (though only virtually) even if they have a very poor athletic system.</p>