I have noticed that on CC people use the shorthand HYPSM when they mean the Ivies. I thought the Ivies were Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UPenn, Dartmouth, Cornell and Columbia. So the question is, why do they lump other schools into that abbreviation? And the implication is that they are denigrating the other Ivies that aren’t contained in that abbreviation. Does the shorthand for Ivies change every year, depending on acceptance rates, in that the schools with the lowest acceptance rates are, by some new definition, Ivies?
and Brown. 
The Ivy League is an athletic conference. HYPSM is generally shorthand referencing elite colleges, in this case, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford. There are other variations, e.g. HYP. Hopefully anyone using these acronyms is not using them to refer to all 8 Ivy League colleges, but you just never know.
Personally, I would like to see the term banned, along with “lower/lesser Ivies.”
Context?
Most people mean Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT when they say HYPSM, not the Ivies.
^^Yikes! Wish I could go back and edit my post but it doesn’t seem to want to let me. Sorry, meant no disrespect, just can’t count! 
Also, when people talk about Ivies here, they actually mean Ivy caliber schools.
They don’t, really…HYPSM is used to refer to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. Two of those are not Ivy League schools at all. If anything it’s shorthand for “five of the most selective colleges by acceptance rate” – 5 - 8%. If people mean Brown they’ll say Brown. If they mean Ivies they’ll say Ivies.
HYPSM is repeatedly used on CC because it stands for the most “prestigious” U’s that also have the lowest acceptance levels- i.e. the U’s that are the hardest to get into.
There is overlap with 3 of them and the "Ivy’s.
It’s just my subjective impression after reading these boards for a long time now, that HYPSM oftentimes seems to be a place holder for the Ivy League.
The designation is probably intended to communicate about the most competitive schools rather than the Ivy Leagues schools. The 8 Ivy schools vary in terms of how difficult it is to gain admissions to them, with the first 3 being extraordinarily difficult but the others slightly less so. Of course it is silliness because these are all very hard to gain admission to and they vary within school too, depending upon major etc. However, Stanford and MIT are considered more similar to Harvard Yale and Princeton in terms of how difficult it is to gain admissions to them, with the other Ivy’s slightly less so.
Re: #7
??? I pretty much never see that. I do see “Ivy League” as a shorthand for the most elite privates in the US (and some people seem to actually believe that there is a distinct divide between the Ivies and all non-Ivies, when by any metric you look at, that’s not true).
I’ve been here much longer than I care to admit and I don’t get this impression.
When people say Ivies (or however you want to spell it), they mean the whole shebang. When they say HYPMS or whatever, they mean those schools. That’s why sometimes you see HYP or other combinations.
“S” isn’t even an Ivy.
I think you’re seeing something which really isn’t there
^
Romani, neither is the “M.” 
I’ve gotten the same impression as you re: what people mean by each term.
I’ve never seen anyone mix them up. Occasionally we get posters who think some non-Ivies ARE Ivies (I think someone called Notre Dame an Ivy a few weeks ago).
It’s just my subjective impression after reading these boards for a long time now, that HYPSM oftentimes seems to be a place holder for the Ivy League.
uh, no…
There are various references on various sites that use the designation HYPSM. I recall that there is some list about which prep schools get more students into which of the HYPSM schools, etc. Sometimes people refer to Ivy Plus schools which would be the 8 Ivy League schools plus MIT and Stanford. I’ve even seen people complain that their parents want them attending only HYPSM and not the 5 other Ivy schools. The entire enterprise seems misguided tho.
I agree when people use HYPSM they mean those schools. I do see HYPS, HYP (never HYPM…hmmm),and of course for those who like a smaller setting, WASP…which may or may not overlap with the NESCACs and the Little (lambs-eat) Ivies.
Lol you’re right, psych. I forget that MIT isn’t because I associate with the rest of the East coast Ivies.
I’ve never much aspired to any particular athletic department (despite having been accepted to Columbia as a grad student… alas, my attraction was the program not the athletic conference the school happened to belong to) so I forget which which schools are officially Ivy League and which are just super dandy schools that happen to to be in NE.
LOL. If you google “Talk:Big Three (universities)”, there is a page looking at this very issue. But in terms of the athletic conference, the commonalities among the 8 schools lead to their being in the conference together and without other schools that could have been included but were not.
Don’t forget CHYMPS (which includes Caltech) 
Or UChicago (depending on your geographic predilections.)