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Little Ivies

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Little Ivies is a colloquialism to refer to a group of small, selectiveThe Business Times of Singapore [mentions Little Ivies] as "elite liberal arts colleges" that are "small and selective." April 17, 2001. American colleges and universities; however, it does not denote any official organization. Institutions identified as Little Ivies are usually old, small, exclusive, and academically competitive liberal arts colleges located in the northeastern United States. The colloquialism is meant to imply that Little Ivies share similarities with the universities of the Ivy League.

"prepchic">Tyre, Peg & William Lee Adams (2005), ["Prep Chic," Newsweek, May 4, 2005] "23 percent of Taft graduates attended one of the Ivies or little Ivies (Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst)."Union-News (Springfield, MA), December 5, 1988, p. 13 (quotes a Bryn Mawr official: "If the Seven Sisters were now Siblings, she asked, did that mean that Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst colleges, referred to as the 'Little Ivies,' were cousins?")The New York Times (1970): "Students decline Wesleyan offers," June 15, 1970, p. 28: "Amherst College, a member with Williams and Wesleyan in the Little Ivy League..." (The term "Little Three" is well-defined as a former athletic leaguePotts, David B. (1999) Wesleyan University, 1831-1910: Collegiate Enterprise in New England. Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0819563609. p. 183: "Wesleyan joined Amherst and Williams in early 1899 to form a new 'Triangular League.' Football, baseball and track competition in this league became something of a trial run for later contests in a wide range of sports under the rubric 'Little Three.'"Watterson, John Sayle (2002): College Football. Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 080187114X. p. ix: "Wesleyan played big-time football in the 1880s and 1890s... but a hundred years later they played a small-college schedule and belong to the Little Three, which also included Amherst and Williams.", and has often been used to identify these schools as a socially and academically elite trioKingston, Paul William and Lionel S. Lewis, "Introduction: Studying Elite Schools in America" (1990). In The High Status Track: Studies of Elite Schools and Stratification. SUNY Press, ISBN 0791400107. p. xviii: "More widely recognized is the distinctive cachet of an Ivy League education—and possibly that at the 'Little Three' (Amherst, Wesleyan and Williams) and a small number of other private colleges and universities."United States Congress, Senate, Committee on Finance (1951): Revenue Act of 1951. p. 1768. Material by Stuart Hedden, president of Wesleyan University Press, inserted into the record: "Popularly known, together with Williams and Amherst, as one of the Little Three colleges of New England, [Wesleyan] has for nearly a century and a quarter served the public welfare by maintaining with traditional integrity the highest academic standards." Published by the U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951.. Encarta defines "Little Ivies" to refer to these three schools, which it characterizes as "small" and "exclusive" and as having "high academic standards and long traditions."[Definition] at MSN Encarta supports definition as the Little Three and calls Little Ivies schools "that have high academic standards and long traditions but are smaller than those in the Ivy League." Some schools that are often called "Little Ivies" include:
Institution Location Little Three Greene's Guides NESCAC Notes
Amherst College Amherst, Massachusetts 20px 20px 20px
Bates College Lewiston, Maine 20px
Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine 20px 20px
Colby College Waterville, Maine 20px
Hamilton College Clinton, New York 20px
Haverford College Haverford, Pennsylvania [link] [link] [link] [link] [link]
Middlebury College Middlebury, Vermont 20px 20px
Swarthmore College Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 20px [link] [link] [link] [link]
Trinity College Hartford, Connecticut 20px
Tufts University Medford, Massachusetts 20px Not a small liberal arts college; a university with over 9,000 students.
Wesleyan University Middletown, Connecticut 20px 20px 20px
Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts 20px 20px 20px

The schools of the Seven Sisters, historically women's colleges, could be considered a counterpart of the Little Ivies. Schools in this group are occasionally described as "little Ivies" themselves; for example, the Business Times of Singapore mentions "Amherst, Williams, Smith, Wellesley and Swarthmore" as examples.

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