The Ivy League Explained

The Ivy League began as an American athletic conference, yet its eight members became bywords for academic prestige. Harvard University, founded in 1636, is the oldest United States university and holds the largest endowment.

Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania date to the colonial era, while Cornell University joined in 1865. Rankings here place them alongside global peers such as Oxford, Cambridge and the University of Tokyo, showing that money alone does not buy the top spots year after year..