Why is Stanford not considered an "Ivy League" school?
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M$4 Answers
So the answer to your question? Stanford is undoubtedly a great school, but isn't an Ivy League school because it doesn't fit the geographic requirement.
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M$
"Ivy League" is not synonymous with "top university". Dartmouth is ranked quite a bit lower than Yale or Harvard. Stanford is certainly right up there near the top of every university ranking list. Other top non-Ivy schools include Caltech, UC Berkeley, and MIT, which depending on the discipline, one could argue are equally good when compared to Yale or Harvard.
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M$
Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University
Find out more about ivy league schools here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League
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M$
This is misleading. It was originally an athletic term and referred to an actual sports league.
You apparently didn't read your own source. The first sentence:
"The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States."
Within the first seven words of the Wikipedia entry you have the correct answer.
It's very much like what you'd find if you looked up "ACC" for my alma mater, The University of Maryland:
"The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic league in the United States...."
And if you look at their lineup, you'll see that's exactly where all of the schools are--in states on The East Coast. Stanford can never be in The ACC.. (Ironically, every Ivy League school is in the geographical confines of The ACC.)
There have been some additions to The ACC since I left college in 1993, denoted with asterisks. I always considered it to be mid-Atlantic to South (Maryland to Florida), and in fact, it was until 2005, but apparently it now goes up to Massachusetts: "The twelve ACC schools cover seven states, each having coastline along the Atlantic Ocean. The geographic midpoint of the ACC as measured by the shortest distance from each school is Bingham, NC,"
Boston College* 2005 (never knew that until just now)
Clemson
Duke
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Maryland
Miami* 2004
North Carolina
North Carolina State
Virginia
Virginia Tech* 2004
Wake Forest
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Coast_Conference
As for "Ivy league also represents social elitism," there are plenty of students at all of those schools who receive financial aid of some sort. I grew up only nine miles from Princeton University, working in the FW Woolworth store across the street from The University's main gate and I dealt with Princeton students every day. I think your view is somewhat skewed and I know because I very well could one of those kids--two kids from my class were. Please check your stereotypes at the door. I tell people that the only reason I didn't apply to Princeton University is because it was a local call from my parents.
But honestly, those kids were just like any other college kids. Their back-to-school, first week, midterm exams, homecoming and graduation were as chaotic as at any other school. I jokingly referred to our store as the "tampon and #2 pencil store." They had to get them somewhere.
This is actually untrue. The Ivy League cannot grow nor shrink. The eight schools, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, and Yale have been and forever will be the eight Ivy League schools.
It takes a long time to grow Ivy all over buildings. The Ivy league schools were probably in business a hundred years before the signing of the declaration of independence. While being the best of the west Stanford is still too new to be an old time school.
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M$
Obviously not researched, completely fabricated and ridiculous.
A fast look at the actual Ivy league website would show you this:
"October 1933 - Stanley Woodward of the New York Herald Tribune first uses the phrase "Ivy colleges" in print to describe the eight current Ivy schools (plus Army). On February 8, 1935, AP Sports editor Alan Gould first uses the exact term "Ivy League". (From Mark Bernstein, Football: The Ivy League Origins of an American Obsession, University of Pennsylvania, 2001)"
And the wikipedia page clarifies it even more:
"According to book Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1988), author William Morris writes that Stanley Woodward actually took the term from fellow New York Tribune sportswriter Caswell Adams. Morris writes that during the 1930s, the Fordham University football team was running roughshod over all its opponents. One day in the sports room at the Tribune, the merits of Fordham's football team were being compared to those of Princeton and Columbia. Adams remarked disparagingly of the latter two, saying they were "only Ivy League." Woodward, the sports editor of the Tribune, picked up the term and printed the next day.
Note though that in the above quote Woodward used the term ivy college, not ivy league as Adams is said to have used, so there is a discrepancy in this theory, although it seems certain the term ivy college and shortly later Ivy League acquired its name from the sports world.
The first known instance of the term Ivy League being used appeared in The Christian Science Monitor on February 7, 1935."
As for how long those schools have been around, you only got it right with one: New College was founded in 1636. We now know it as Harvard. Collegiate School, now Yale, opened in 1701, and of all, the newest, Cornell, opened in 1865.
Stanford began its existence only 20 years later:
"The university's founding Grant of Endowment from Leland and Jane Stanford was written on November 11, 1885, and accepted by the first Board of Trustees on November 14...The cornerstone was laid on May 14, 1887, and after six years of planning and building, the university officially opened on October 1, 1891 to 559 students and 15 faculty members, seven of them from Cornell."
So there's been agreement for over 119 years that Stanford is on-par with Ivy League schools. But I've been close to people in Development Offices at a prep school that opened in 1925, so I know how fundraising from old-money private schools works. At almost 120 years old, you can't tell me that Stanford doesn't have some old money flowing into it.
Sources:
http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/history/timeline/index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford
Great answer and you beat me to it! I grew up 9 miles from, and in high school worked directly across the street from the main gate of Princeton University. My parents still live in the area, though I split over 20 years ago.