<p>Glido–I was just about to bring up the same thing. Our local paper just had a headline about our local state school being “the Harvard of…” I actually commented to my H about this saying there is no Harvard but Harvard. (We both work at the state school) There is no Harvard of the west, south, public, little, etc, etc.</p>
<p>Likewise, there is no Ivy League other than the 8.</p>
<p>The reason so many claim to be “part of the Ivy”, is because these are 8 great schools, with the top of the top students and are very difficult to get into. Schools want to be considered the same way. There are also a few others. No one denies that.</p>
<p>But to say the Ivy is just a sports designation is ridiculous and so 50-60 years ago. But to say that the Ivy’s are the only top schools is equally ridiculous.</p>
<p>Well, technically Harvard didn’t admit women (undergraduates that is) until 1973.</p>
<p>Fun fact: In 1967, though Bryn Mawr was traditionally the “sister school” to Princeton, Princeton administrators tried to convince Sarah Lawrence administrators to move Sarah Lawrence to Princeton and merge with the university (similar to what Brown did with Pembroke). They wouldn’t do it and Princeton admitted women beginning in 1969.</p>
<p>Jym- Happy to see you use the term “Kudzu League” I coined in a post on 9-22-2010 in the College Search and Selection forum! Can I collect royalties???</p>
<p>As a student at a school often referred to as a “public ivy,” including in this thread, I am kind of offended by the term. We don’t need any association with “ivy” to communicate that we are a good university. Our reputation stands for itself, thank you very much!</p>
<p>Though, I must say that when one says “I am attending my local state school” or “my state flagship,” minds don’t automatically jump to a umich-caliber category of school, so I suppose when one doesn’t want to identify the school by name but hopes to categorize the prestige of the school in some way because it is relevant to the conversation, which it sometimes is, they have little choice but to resort to one silly phrase or another.</p>
<p>justmytwocents-
Same was true of Vassar and Yale. Yale wanted Vassar to move from Poughkeepsie to New Haven. Wasn’t happenin’. So both went co-ed.</p>
<p>Hey fauve. Didn’t see your “kudzu league” in another thread, but I guess great minds think alike. What was your coined term in reference to?</p>
<p>I think starbright has it about right. IIRC, the athletic league that was formally organized in 1954 as the Ivy Group, is really the appropriation of a stereotype which dates back to the Jazz Age, when football was being distilled as the preeminent college pasttime. I think more people knew an “ivied campus” back then, when they saw one than could list all the members of any particular “league” off the top of their head. Every region of the country had some place where the local gentry sent their children; Michigan and UVA, both state universities, certainly come to mind; Private colleges like Miami in Ohio, or Ripon would almost certainly have attacted their share of future rotarians. It’s a token of how completely a 1950s marketing flourish succeeded in capturing a brand – the image of ivy climbing up an ancient wall – that no one can think of it without also thinking of the Ancient Eight.</p>
<p>I am liking the term CHYMPS to describe this tier of schools because they seem to generate a certain unexamined imitation. So you hear of kids (or their parents) who want to go to a CHYMPS school regardless of the fit. “Their daughter got into CHYPMS–you should too.” If we called them CHYMPS, maybe that would tone down a bit.</p>
<p>Then we could have the public CHYMPS, the near CHYMPS, etc. I see all sorts of potential.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Cornell was NOT the only Ivy to be co-educational before 1968. Penn started admitting women shortly after the founding of Cornell.</p></li>
<li><p>At one level, “Ivy” has lost its clear meaning, because most people can’t and don’t distinguish places like Stanford or Duke from members of the Ivy League. They think “Ivy” is shorthand for “elite private research university”. And they are clear in their belief that Harvard has more in common with Stanford than with Cornell, whether or not that is true.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>At another level, there are some significant cultural differences between the Ivies and the other universities or colleges that are almost-just-the-same-as-the-Ivies. The balance of athletics and academics is different (in different directions) at Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago, MIT, Hopkins, Swarthmore, Williams. And the liberal-arts focus is a clear distinction vs. MIT or Cal Tech, while the research focus is a clear distinction vs. the LAC world. “Ivy” actually retains pretty good vitality as a brand for a particular complex blend of qualities.</p>
<p>Still, when one just wants to connote “good academic school”, and not this particular blend taken as a whole, there ought to be some other catch-phrase for that, not “Ivy league”.</p>
<p>It does exist … to a certain degree, as it the Association of American Universities (AAU) is an association of 63 leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada. </p>
<p>The problem is that for the people who use the term Ivies or Ivy League as a substitute for academic prowess AND “prestige and elite,” the list is too comprehensive, and shall we say, way too pedestrian because of the debatable inclusion of some. </p>
<p>Fwiw, we all know that, for the overwhelming majority of Americans, the definition of greatness in our universities is established by the BCS polls. For them, terms such as Ivy League, Public Ivies, Little Ivies, or my own choice of “catch-all” term (Ivy Wannabes) are simply akin to a B.S. poll!</p>
<p>Until this year SUNY Geneseo referred to itself on its website as a “Public Ivy.” If they are still doing it the phrase must be buried deep into the site. I don’t know for sure why they stopped billing themselves that way, but I have heard that it was at the behest of SUNY Headquarters who were upset that any one SUNY college or university was trying to seperate itself from the pack. I’m also not certain as to when the change to the website occured but I am 99.9% sure it was before Queen’s Mom’s post.</p>
to see you use the term “Kudzu League” I coined in a post on 9-22-2010 in the College Search and Selection forum! Can I collect royalties???</p>