<p>The Ivy league is and has always been a sports designation. It has nothing to do with the academic excellence of a particular school. </p>
<p>I know UVa, UNC, and Michigan are great academic schools, but seriously folks! Vent over.</p>
<p>BTW, it is not so prevalent on this board. I was just really POed at a conversation I had in real life.</p>
<p>Agreed…about “public Ivy”. Can we also stop using “little Ivy”…come on folks…I agree that Amherst and Williams, etc are great schools…but “little Ivy” is not a great term for them.</p>
<p>Agreed. My son wants to attend one of “those” schools. He likes it because it is a smaller public with a nice campus and a good reputation that is in his budget and a comfortable distance from home (and a good program in his intended major). He is not an Ivy wannabe. We’ve never called this school a public Ivy. But it’s an old school with a lovely campus and a nice history. Maybe we need to come up with another name for these schools that are smaller publics.</p>
<p>A Near Ivy (like near beer)…</p>
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<p>Here is my little pet peeve too - stop saying that Ivy is just a sports designation. It may have started like that, but today they are schools of academic excellence. By saying it’s just a sports designation is to trivialize them academically. There are many other schools that are just as much of power house academically, and certainly do not need “Ivy” in front of its name to prove its academic excellence.</p>
<p>How about we as a culture get over this entire “Ivy” obsession that seems to be about parents and students perceived status only. Not the quality of education. </p>
<p>There are many, many schools that give as good or dare I say it a better education than an Ivy school. I know several out of work Ivy grads that are in financial trouble. I also know several tier 3 or 4 grads doing extremely well. </p>
<p>It is what you do with your education that matters, not the institution.</p>
<p>I think there is a areason why NSW college ranking does not take financial success of each school’s graduates as a parameter, otherwise some CC or vocational schools would have been ranked higher than many LACs.</p>
<p>maybe call them USNEWs schools… or window decal envy schools… or wannabe schools, or prestige-lite, or…</p>
<p>I don’t know - I think all those Ivy terms are somewhat useful in denoting a certain level of academic excellence. Though it would be better to come up with a more inclusive term that would put the MITs, Northwesterns, Rices, Stanfords, etc., in with the eight Ivies. I do like “window decal envy” schools - the WDEs!</p>
<p>I was just wondering how long the term “public Ivies” has been around. If wikipedia has it right, it was invented in 1985 by an admissions professional who had worked at Yale, Bowdoin, Vassar, and UCSC, so he had some inkling about what makes a top school. It’s helpful to have a category of more affordable schools for kids who want an elite academic experience but whose parents can’t afford Ivies or other WDE schools, or who are excellent students but just not admitted to those ultra-selective schools. </p>
<p>And even though I’ve had two kids attend a public Ivy (just to be obnoxious this AM :D), I don’t think the student experience at the top publics is the same as at an Ivy or other WDE school. Though I do think the experience at a top public can be better for an individual student, depending upon what makes that student happiest.</p>
<p>I would like someone to dump the Public Ivy term because it causes elitists to feel it necessary to jump all over kids who are attending perfectly good schools that are a good fit for their goals.</p>
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I think this post is more mocking the present system than actually insulting any school. It’s actually a pretty light-hearted post. No one needs to get their panties in a bunch. </p>
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I really do not see any elitism in this thread, maybe some sports elitism, but that’s a bit different. Everybody just needs to chill out and realize that there are schools that would almost consider it a downgrade to be called an Ivy (not really, but my point is that there are many schools that are of Ivy league caliber academics or higher).</p>
<p>If anything, I’m seeing a lot of people saying Ivies aren’t everything and that’s why we need to lose the term.</p>
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<p>Wait–who is it who actually uses this term? Isn’t this term mainly used to compliment the public schools themselves and is not pejorative? I don’t see someone saying that Berkeley is a public Ivy is a slam on any kid who attends. What am I missing?</p>
<p>I think it’s a very small agregate of people that even make distinctions of this nature. Many people outside the NE corridor think Rutgers is in the Ivy League. Many people outside the NE corridor think Penn means Penn State. WUSTL would leave huge chunks of even college educated people clueless. People lump colleges together in all sorts of ways. Many times these are designations based on the athletic leagues: Pac 10, Big 10, SEC. Sometimes it’s a generic designatation like LAC, as if all LACs are all the same. Most people couldn’t tell you the difference between Cal State and Cal Tech. With the exception of a handful of nationally known and internationally known schools, some in the Ivy League, some in the Pac 10, some in the Big 10, some in leagues I have no clue, once you leave a region very few know the names of the colleges or the caliber of those schools. This has been discussed time and again. I’m not really bothered by the designations that people choose to try to give definition to a particular college or university. Heck most people don’t know the difference between a college and a university and we loosely interchange those terms. Life is good in the midwest. Around here if a kid heads off to a nationally known college (and that would include colleges that win national sports prominence but not necessarily academic prominence) the general comment would be “wow that kid must be smart.” So be it.</p>
<p>OK…Smith, Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, Wellesley, Radcliffe (which has merged with Harvard), Bryn Mawr and Barnard are the Seven Sisters schools. At one point all were women’s colleges that were considered to be (and I think still are considered to be) on par with the Ivy League schools that were all men’s colleges until 1968-1972 when they all became coed. Of course, these Seven Sisters schools didn’t HAVE the sports teams (that the Ivy League had…football, men’s basketball…of course this was "pre title 9). I don’t hear these Seven Sisters schools referred to as “Ivy like” but they were in many ways sister schools to the Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>You know…as Oldfort says…there are many ways to describe schools and the academic excellence…besides Ivy or any other name they might have.</p>
<p>Jym626’s post gave me a good chuckle.</p>
<p>D2, who is 17 and could be very sarcastic at times, said to me, “Sarcasm is a sign of intelligence.”</p>
<p>Jym wins the prize for today.</p>
<p>Most people can’t name all the Ivy’s. I’ve been on this site a long time and I still struggle. I think most people know HYP and MIT for academic excellence. Otherwise many more people can name schools based on their sports teams.</p>
<p>And then there is HYPSM…</p>
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<p>Cornell was committed to being co-ed from the time when it was founded. The first woman to receive a degree from Cornell graduated in 1873.</p>
<p>But then, Cornell has always been the Ivy League oddball – and we Cornellians like it that way.</p>
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<p>I’m not a big fan of the term “public Ivy” but these reasons given in the first post are simply incorrect. To begin with, the term Ivy League was in common usage and used in newspapers for at least 20 years prior to the formation of the Ivy League athletic conference in the 1950s. And it is not solely a sports designation. Wikipedia sums it up nicely:</p>
<p>“The use of the phrase is no longer limited to athletics, and now represents an educational philosophy inherent to the nation’s oldest schools.[4] In addition, Ivy League schools are often viewed by the public as some of the most prestigious universities worldwide and are often ranked amongst the best universities in the United States and worldwide.[5]”</p>
<p>[Ivy</a> League - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League]Ivy”>Ivy League - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Like many terms, “Ivy League” has two definitions, a narrow one and a wider one. The sports league is the narrow usage, and the “educational philosophy inherent to the nation’s oldest schools” is the wider one. Thus the term “Public Ivy” may be annoying, but it is also a legitimate example of the wider usage and is not inherently incorrect.</p>
<p>Forgot about the seven sisters…yes that is definitely another “grouping.” I always thought Wells was in there (ya know like the Big Ten - which is really the Big Eleven or mabe it’s Twelve these days).</p>
<p>And with regard to Wikipedia - “educational philosophy?” and that would be???</p>