“UChicago has attracted an enormous number of applicants without using the “Rockefeller” name, which I would venture a guess less than a fourth of college applicants even find familiar.”
Sure. These are all great names/brands too: University of Nashville, University of Palo Alto, University of Durham, University of Ithaca, University of Atlanta, Pittsburgh Institute, Houston Institute, …
But UChi isn’t a worse handle than UPenn. So there is that.
Also if anyone has been to any of the other five Ivies, the term Ivy is used quite frequently. That was the reality I experienced.
I still have a hard time thinking of Brown as a “real” Ivy. Does anyone remember their essay prompt a million years ago that started, “Write an essay in your own hand…” and the no doubt apocryphal stories about applicants actually tracing the outlines of their hands and filling in some words?
Absolutely agree with @Scipio . My S is a graduate of Columbia, and the last thing he cares about is who is and who isn’t an “Ivy.” Apparently according to posts here, his Dad and I went to a public “Ivy” and his sister to a “little Ivy” and really, none of us care. We went to good schools, as did thousands of students all over the country.
As a Cornell alum, all that mattered was the ECAC rankings ; )
Again, really missing the point, but you did add “little Ivy” to the nomenclature.
That Life article (post #38) was fascinating. 1 in 5 chance of getting into Harvard. Co-ed schools and Men’s colleges, but I don’t think any of the women’s colleges were included. The description of Harvard was interesting, “Student body apt to be overbalanced with the very bright - needs tempering with the average.” Princeton also gets dinged. “Selection overbalanced in favor of high I.Q.s.” Okay now…
I remember that Brown application. Everyone else got the typed version of my essay, but I had to write the whole thing by hand for them.
I think the term “New Ivy” was coined by a Newsweek article to sell the issue. RPI made the cut and the acceptance rate went from 60% to 40% that year. Presumably because so many more kids applied.
I agree that the name is somewhat unfortunate. Many people assume that Chicago is a public university or get it mixed up with UIC.
Chicago adopted the name of an earlier university which lasted from 1857 to 1886. Initially, at least, the new university emphasized a spiritual continuity with the old university (to lend it a bit of gravitas, among other reasons). That distinguishes Chicago from schools like Stanford, Vandy, and Rice, which were founded ex nihilo. Duke was admittedly renamed in honor of James B. Duke’s donations, but its old name Trinity College is still used for the undergraduate college.
A speech of Frederick Gates, an advisor to Rockefeller, on July 9, 1890:
The Trustees of the University of Chicago, founded in 1857, the work of which was discontinued some years since, have unanimously and heartily bequeathed to you the name “the University of Chicago,” and with the name they bequeath also their alumni. The new University of Chicago rises out of the ruins of the old. The thread of legal life is broken. Technicalities difficult or impossible to be removed have prevented our use of the charter of 1857. The new University of Chicago, with a new site, a new management, new and greatly multiplied resources, and free from all embarrassing complications, nevertheless bears the name of the old, is located in the same community, under the same general denominational auspices, is supported by the same class of public spirited citizens, will enter on the same educational work, and will aim to realize the highest hopes of those who were disappointed in the old. A generation hence the break in legal life will have lapsed from the memory of men. In the congeries of interests, affections, aspirations, and endeavors which do in fact form the real life of an institution of learning, in these there has been no break…
Rockefeller did found a Rockefeller University about a decade later. It’s a very different type of school from Chicago and tends to fly under the radar, though.
Dartmouth was questionable for the Ivy League well into 1950s because of its small size. My sense is that it wasn’t until it went through a growth spurt later in the decade that it became really competitive compared to the other members of the conference. In the meantime, a large portion of its schedule consisted of round-robin play with four other New England men’s colleges (there was no NESCAC officially back then) in an athletic league called, the Pentagonal Conference which consisted of Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Wesleyan and Williams. Even today, Dartmouth is the only Ivy League member of the 12 College Exchange.
Another fun fact: People have largely forgotten the “lost” member of the Ivy League, Rutgers University (formerly, Queens College) which is the eighth oldest institution of higher learning in the United States (est. 1766). It’s been rumored for years that Cornell (which would have been well short of a century old in 1954) was a replacement for RU which had been in straitened financial circumstances for some time before being taken over by the State of New Jersey in 1948.
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If that was addressed to me, I used quotation marks because I was quoting someone above (that’s how quotation marks work), not adding to the nomenclature.
And I do not think I am missing the point.
Ivies advertise aggressively and smartly. In private college universe, it’s do or die, you have to be mesmerizing. It’s very much like other designer goodies.
CU123- “I guess some missed the point, the masterful job of marketing was they didn’t have to do any marketing………they had others do it for them (through the constant comparison)”
Count me as one who missed the point. How did 8 individual schools “masterfully” collude to effectively influence the actions of “others” including individuals, universities, the media and society (all of whom utilize the nomenclature you point to) all so now they can sit back and Let others do their bidding? Do you also suspect the Ivy League of being behind the moon landing “hoax”?
^The OP is tripping over his own argument. Call it “marketing”. Call it “branding”. The genius was in the original decision to make official what had been a largely generic term that had been in circulation since it was coined by a newspaperman in the 1930s.
Growing up in England I was aware of Harvard, Princeton and Yale, mostly through movies, books and covering JFK in a history class.
The other Ivies, I doubt I could have named until I moved to New York.
I was more aware of Notre Dame than Cornell.
Maybe it was all about traditional boy network, boys from those 8 schools looked after each other, they gave jobs to each other, so it became if you want to go some where then you need to go to one of those schools. No marketing was needed. As matter of fact, less people knew about it, better it was for them.
Based on the Life article posted in #37, the Ivies have not had to do much marketing as the parents of current students knew those were the best schools. Interesting to see that while some of the schools have shifted placed on the list (Stanford is now in the first tier and Reed likely is not), much of the “buzz” about those schools is still valid. Not all, of course, but much of it. Also many of the schools on the list were only for men at that point in time.
Of course the Ivies don’t do much/any horn tooting marketing. Since that would be 180 degrees opposite to what the Ivy brand stands for. Which is the club you’d like to belong to but they won’t have you as a member.
The most exclusive golf club is Augusta National. As Bill Gates learned, they’ll black ball you for even inquiring about how to become a member. You can’t apply; they just invite who they want to. And no one turns their invitation down. That’s the brand, which is the best in golf.
“That distinguishes Chicago from schools like Stanford, Vandy, and Rice, which were founded ex nihilo. Duke was admittedly renamed in honor of James B. Duke’s donations, but its old name Trinity College is still used for the undergraduate college.”
Vandy is a rename like Duke and many others. The de novo list is pretty short – can’t think of any other than Stanford, Rice, Carnegie.
@rjkofnovi Just adding to your comment. I believe Stanford (and MIT to certain extent) has better non-engineering departments than most Ivy schools. For example, Economics, Psychology, International Relations etc.
@Jon234 I immigrated to USA around 7 years when I went to Cornell, and I wasn’t even aware that it was an Ivy school. It’s embarrassing but I found out it was an Ivy after 1st semester. All I remember is their slogan “Go Big Red” and it was freezing cold. Going there was a big impetus why I moved to CA. lol
At that time, I never realized Darthmouth, Brown, Cornell and UPenn were all Ivy League colleges; I only thought Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia were Ivy colleges.
I have to say Duke has gone up the ranking the most since I applied to college.