<p>Umm . . . no. I can’t imagine any of the schools you list in post #19 wanting to join the Ivy League. Duke (always) and Georgetown (often) are national basketball powerhouses; that’s central to their identity, image, and alumni loyalty. They’d kill their basketball programs if they had to live with the Ivy League’s prohibition on athletic scholarships. Won’t happen. Ever. </p>
<p>Same for Stanford which is now a football powerhouse and often very strong in basketball. On the other hand, the Ivy League is too jockish for the likes of MIT and Chicago. Besides, schools like Stanford, MIT, and Chicago have proven they don’t need the “Ivy League” label to be academic powerhouses, or to be perceived as such by anyone they’re trying to impress. It’s the non-HYP Ivies that benefit most from the Ivy League label, because to gullible members of the public that label somehow elevates them to near-HYP status.</p>
<p>If Cornell left the Ivy League, I think it would turn into a school like UMich. Academics would go down, generally, but sports would be solid and the name-brand would be stronger.</p>
<p>I mean, normal people only know Cornell from Andy Bernard in the Office. Which, come on, is pathetic.</p>
<p>I agree with your points. But Stanford, MIT, Chicago, and Duke are almost always associated with the Ivy League in terms of prestige and academics. Sports are usually there for entertainment. Plenty of people can live without concerning themselves with sports. I was simply pointing out universities that rival the Ivies in prestige and academics.
However, you are right. Taking athletic prowess is indeed important to classify universities.</p>
<p>If one member left, the league would need an eighth member to keep the athletic schedule balanced and to keep the competition equal the eighth member would need a student body whose AI(Academic Index) would match the other seven or at least be in close range.That eliminates virtually everyone except Georgetown and Duke, and either of those would be reluctant to forfeit their national name recogniition from big time basketball.</p>
<p>The Ancient eight would actually be in a real pickle. Picking any other school would would lead to problematic competitive problems either from not having enough good athletes (MIT and Cal Tech) or not enough intellectual horsepower in the athletes themselves (several other names such as those in post 13).</p>
<p>LOL. I’m not sure what you mean by “Academics would go down.” Across all disciplines, Michigan’s faculties and graduate programs are on average as strong or stronger than Cornell’s. Both schools have outstanding faculties, however, and there’s no reason that would change if Cornell left the Ivy League. Schools like Michigan, Berkeley, Chicago, and Stanford prove you don’t need to have that Ivy label to recruit and retain outstanding faculty.</p>
<p>Where Cornell has an advantage over Michigan is in the average stats of its undergraduate student body, but the gap is not huge: </p>
<p>Cornell: 700+ SAT CR 42%, 700+ SAT M 60%
Michigan: 700+ SAT CR 24%, 700+ SAT M 47% </p>
<p>Cornell: middle 50% SAT 1290-1500
Michigan: middle 50% SAT 1230-1430 </p>
<p>But that’s mainly because as a public institution, Michigan maintains a much larger undergrad student body, and is under political pressure to admit a large number of in-state residents—and in order to do so, it needs to reach deeper into the applicant pool. Look at it this way: Michigan enrolls a little over 6,000 freshmen (6,079 in the fall of 2009); Cornell enrolls roughly half that (3,181 freshmen in the fall of 2009). If Michigan could shrink the size of its freshman class by half, lopping off the bottom half of the class, the stats of the remaining 3,000 freshmen (currently the top half) would almost certainly be HIGHER than Cornell’s. And there’s actually been serious discussion in Michigan about doing just that; financial support from the legislature is now so small that arguably it makes no sense for the university to continue to heavily subsidize in-state students with deep tuition discounts. If it went private it could charge a uniform tuition rate, dramatically shrink its undergrad student body, increase selectivity and average undergrad stats, and still come out ahead financially.</p>
<p>But there’s no reason that, by cutting loose from the Ivy League, Cornell would need to increase its student body and thereby dilute its stats. I suspect its stats would stay pretty much where they are now, i.e., roughly comparable to (or slightly behind) Northwestern, the “other” private Big Ten school.</p>
<p>I doubt top faculty care about the ivy label. Want they want are schools that can give them the top dollars to fund their research and the facilities to go with it. Mich, Berkeley e.t.c have those.</p>
<p>First comment: Nobody is going to join or leave the Ivy League. It isn’t going to happen. Zero chance.</p>
<p>Second comment: if it did happen, then I think the Ivies would take a hard look at Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>JHU would be a reasonable fit geographically; there are Ivies all along the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Philly, and Baltimore is the next stop to the south. JHU would be an excellent fit academically – the current USN&WR ranks it higher than Cornell and Brown. JHU has other attractive features: it’s a research powerhouse, and has top professional schools. Granted, JHU is not very old by Ivy standards, but it’s only a few years younger than Cornell (1876 vs. 1865).</p>
<p>The only real issue for JHU would be that most of its athletic programs currently play at the Division III level. However, JHU’s lacrosse teams already operate (very successfully) in Division I, under a special NCAA exemption, and already have a heated rivalry with Princeton. </p>
<p>So the question would be whether JHU could “upgrade” the rest of its athletic program to Division I. JHU has previously thought about it – a few years ago, the NCAA was considering a proposal to remove the Division I exemption for the lacrosse programs, and JHU acknowledged at the time that a full move to Division I was one of the options that they were weighing. As it turned out, JHU got to keep the lacrosse exemption, so nothing happened.</p>
<p>But JHU athletics have been improving steadily in recent years, and they now rank near the top of the NACDA Director’s Cup standings for DIII (they finished #13 nationwide for 2009-2010, and are currently at #10 for 2010-2011). It’s not crazy to suppose that JHU could ratchet the rest of their athletics up to the DI level, just as they have done successfully with lacrosse.</p>
You’re probably right. But see, this is why JHU could (in theory) work as an Ivy. JHU’s athletic identity is not tied to basketball or football – it sees itself as the nation’s premier lacrosse school. No, you couldn’t maintain a nationally relevant basketball or football program in the Ivy League … but a lax program ? Sure. Princeton is a regular contender for NCAA DI lacrosse championships.
Again, probably true. But JHU has serious jock credentials (39 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances and counting) in at least one sport. So they would have a foundation to build on.</p>
<p>I think Cornell leaving and Georgetown joining makes the most sense. Cornell already has a larger acceptance rate then the other ivies and leaving in New York I have heard about how less and less people are going there due to location (might not be truth to this but I could see why people wouldn’t want to go there). Georgetown has the academic levels and everything else that would make it a good ivy and I know quite a few people that believe it’s a ivy right now lol</p>
<p>The issue is that basketball makes georgetown a ton of money. Are they going to forfeit it?
I think they should. The Ivy label is priceless. They could still (and would still) make it into the NCAA tourny regularly through at-large bids, but I would be delusional if I said that the program wouldnt drop a bit. Anyways, Georgetown may consider it. But JHU would love to join the Ivy League, I think.</p>
<p>Here’s my concern with whoever said that if Cornell left the Ivy league its quality would stay the same. The Ivy label is buoying Cornell right now. Anyone who knows anything about colleges knows that Cornell is a lower Ivy, yet most people dont know that. They think Cornell is on par with the non-HYP Ivies.</p>
<p>The world will spiral into chao and anarchy. God in his infinite wisdom, will have to reset time because the world cannot exist without the ivy league.</p>