Little Ivies is a colloquialism referring to a group of American colleges and universities known for being small institutions that are as academically competitive as the members of the Ivy League. Since there is no official organization known as the "Little Ivy League," status as a Little Ivy can be defined in various ways:
- It is sometimes synonymous with the "Little Three," Amherst, Wesleyan, and Williams. Vorlage:RefVorlage:RefVorlage:Ref (The term "Little Three" itself has a clear definition as a former athletic league Vorlage:RefVorlage:Ref, and is also used to identify these schools as a socially and academically elite trio Vorlage:RefVorlage:RefVorlage:Ref).
- It can refer to the schools of the modern-day New England Small College Athletic ConferenceVorlage:Ref Vorlage:Ref (NESCAC), which includes the "Little Three" together with five other schools.
- The book The Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence uses it to refer to "Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, and Williams," schools which it says have "scaled the heights of prestige and selectivity and also turn away thousands of our best and brightest young men and women."Vorlage:Ref
The schools on the Greenes' list of "Little Ivies" have some characteristics in common in addition to their "prestige and selectivity" : they are old, historically-male, small liberal arts colleges located in the northeastern United States.
Some schools that are often called "Little Ivies" include:
| Institution | Location | Little Three | Greene and Greene | NESCAC | Notes |
| Amherst College | Amherst, Massachusetts | 
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| Bates College | Lewiston, Maine |
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| Bowdoin College | Brunswick, Maine |
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| Colby College | Waterville, Maine |
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| Hamilton College | Clinton, New York |
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| Haverford College | Haverford, Pennsylvania | [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] | |||
| Middlebury College | Middlebury, Vermont |
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| Swarthmore College | Swarthmore, Pennsylvania |
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[6] [7] [8] [9] | ||
| Trinity College | Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Tufts University | Medford, Massachusetts |
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A large university, not a small liberal arts college | ||
| Wesleyan University | Middletown, Connecticut |
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| Williams College | Williamstown, Massachusetts |
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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
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
- The Atlantic Monthly: "Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams"
- Tamalpais Union High School: "Amherst, Bowdoin, Hamilton, Haverford, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams."
- 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 Tyre, Peg & William Lee Adams (2005), "Prep Chic," Newsweek, May 4, 2005[10] "23 percent of Taft graduates attended one of the Ivies or little Ivies (Wesleyan, Williams and Amherst)."
- Vorlage:Note 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?")
- Vorlage:Note 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..."
- Vorlage:Note As of 2005, the NESCAC (website) includes: Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams.
Vorlage:Note An explanation of "Little Ivy" at athletesadvisor.com
- Vorlage:Note Greene, Howard and Mathew Greene (2000) Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning: The Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence, HarperCollins, ISBN 0060953624, excerpt at [11]
- 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." Published by the U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951.