Guide
What the Ivy League list actually is
The Ivy League on this page is an athletic conference of eight universities. It is not a quality ranking, and it is not a nickname for every hard-to-enter school in the country. A famous university stays off this list when it is not one of those eight.
The table is alphabetical, so the order does not crown a winner. Open a name for the full College Scorecard profile. The figures later in this guide describe only this roster.
- Schools
- 8
- States
- 7
- Median admit rate
- 5%
- All schools report a rate
- Median earnings
- $102,154
- 10 years after entry
The eight members
This page matches eight school records: Brown, Columbia, Cornell University, Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. IPEDS stores their football conference as Ivy Group. Matching the records, rather than a search for the word Cornell, is what keeps the list exact.
All eight play FCS football and report NCAA Division I athletics in this file. The conference does not award athletic scholarships. Need-based aid is a different question. That figure lives on the school profile, not in the membership rule.
Names that cause mix-ups
Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, is not Cornell University. Cornell College is a liberal arts college with a United Methodist affiliation, and its football team plays in the Midwest Conference. Only Cornell University is on this page.
Duke, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Chicago are not Ivy League members. They are on the Ivy Plus list. Playing an Ivy opponent, or being called Ivy in conversation, does not add a school here.
How to read the eight rows
Compare price, earnings, and size inside a fixed roster. Do not treat the lowest admission rate as a prize. Several of these universities admit a small share of applicants. That fact is already widely known, and it is not the point of the page.
Location still matters inside a small conference. Columbia is in New York. Dartmouth is in New Hampshire. Princeton is in New Jersey. The conference is not a region, and the state column is there so you can see that.
What this page refuses to do
People use Ivy League as a stand-in for prestige. This site does not. The list follows the conference roster. Academic reputation, endowment, and magazine ranks are not the rule, so they cannot add a ninth name.
Use Ivy Plus when you want the wider research set that adds Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago. Use the Division I football page when you want every FCS and FBS program, including these eight.
Where the schools are
These schools sit in 7 states. The largest groups are New York (2), Connecticut (1), Massachusetts (1), New Hampshire (1), and New Jersey (1). The rest of the roll is spread across the other states in the table.
Who runs them
Every school with a reported control is a private nonprofit college. Control is the Scorecard field. It is not a judgment about quality.
Predominant degree is the credential the campus awards most often. On this list it is a bachelor's degree at 8 schools. A campus can still award other credentials.
How large they are
The largest undergraduate enrollments on this list are Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with 15,995 undergraduates, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with 10,650 undergraduates, and Columbia University in the City of New York in New York, New York, with 8,973 undergraduates. Enrollment is the undergraduate figure. It is not a ranking, and it leaves out graduate students.
Admission
8 of 8 schools report an admission rate. The median of those rates is 5%. Schools with no reported rate stay out of the median. A missing rate is not an open door, and it is not a closed one.
The lowest reported admission rates on this list are Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 4%, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, at 4%, and Columbia University in the City of New York in New York, New York, at 4%. A lower rate is harder entry. It is not a score for the school.
The highest reported admission rates on this list are Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, at 9%, Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, at 5%, and University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at 5%.
What they charge
Among 8 private colleges that report a sticker price, the median is $68,477.
Sticker price is not net price. Grants, waivers, and a service commitment can move the bill by a wide margin. Open a school for the net-price figures.
Earnings and graduation
Among 8 schools that report earnings, the median of those school-level medians is $102,154. The clock starts at entry, not at graduation. The highest reported medians on this list are University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at $111,371, Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, at $110,066, and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, at $104,043.
Among 8 schools that report a graduation rate, the median rate is 96%. A blank rate is left out. It is not treated as zero.
Also on other lists
Some of these schools also meet the rule for another list on this site. The overlap is a second flag or a second classification. It is not a second ranking.
All of them are also on R1 research universities.
How these figures work
Admission rate, enrollment, sticker price, earnings, and graduation rate all come from the College Scorecard. Earnings are the median 10 years after a student entered the school. Tuition for a public college is the in-state sticker price. Tuition for a private college is the published sticker price. None of these is net price after aid.
A blank field stays blank. This page does not turn a blank admission rate into an open door, a blank fee into a free application, or a blank earnings figure into zero. The table above is membership under the rule in this guide. Sort order is not a quality ranking.