Little Ivies

Little Ivies is a colloquialism with no precise meaning. It can mean:

• The "Little Three," Amherst, Wesleyan, and Williams. The term "Little Three" has a clear definition as a former athletic league Vorlage:RefVorlage:Ref, and is also used to identify these schools as an elite trio Vorlage:RefVorlage:Ref.
• The schools of the modern-day New England Small College Athletic ConferenceVorlage:Ref(NESCAC), which includes the "Little Three" together with five other schools. The Boston Globe has made this identification explicitly.
• Various colleges in the northeastern United States, that are thought to share some characteristics with the colleges of the eight Ivy League universities. Typically this term is used in reference to older, historically-male liberal arts colleges, centered in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States; like "Little Three" the term is used to suggest both that they are academically respected and socially prestigious.

Schools, in NESCAC unless otherwise noticed, that have been called "little Ivies" include:

• Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts (one of the "Little Three")
• Bates College in Lewiston, Maine
• Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine
• Colby College in Waterville, Maine
• Hamilton College in Clinton, New York
• Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania (not in NESCAC) [1]
• Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont
• Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (not in NESCAC) [2]
• Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut
• Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts (in NESCAC, but a large university, not a small liberal arts college)
• Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut (one of the "Little Three")
• Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts (one of the "Little Three")

Some believe that the term "Little Ivies" can be misleading, saying that small liberal arts colleges offer a very different undergraduate experience from that of research universities such as the Ivy League schools.

The schools of the Seven Sisters, historically women's universities, could be considered a counterpart of the Little Ivies.

See also

• Colby-Bates-Bowdoin
• Ivy League
• Jesuit Ivy
• Little Three
• NESCAC
• Public Ivies
• Preppy
• Seven Sisters (colleges)
• Southern Ivies

Examples of use

• The New York Times, February 10, 1955, p. 33 quotes the President of Swarthmore, describing and decrying social snobbery: "We not only have the Ivy League, and the pretty clearly understood though seldom mentioned gradations within the Ivy League, but we have the Little Ivy League, and the jockeying for position within that."
• Harvard magazine
• Associate Justice Kennedy
• Episcopal High School of Houston
• Midwest Elite Hockey League
• The Williams Club
• Newsweek: "Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst"
• The Atlantic Monthly: "Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams"
• Tamalpais Union High School: "Amherst, Bowdoin, Hamilton, Haverford, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams."
• 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?"
• Boston Globe, September 20, 1985, p. 36 refers to "The New England Small College Athletic Conference (alias NESCAC or the 'Little Ivies')".

Notes

• Vorlage:Note As of 2005, the NESCAC (website) includes: Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity College (Connecticut), Tufts, Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and Williams
• Vorlage:Note Potts, 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.'"
• Vorlage:Note 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."
• Vorlage:Note Kingston, 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."
• Vorlage:Note 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."

Author(s) United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Finance Publisher U.S. Govt. Print. Off. Publication Date 1951