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Little Ivies is a colloquialism referring to a group of small, selective[The 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 league,[Potts, David B. (1999) Wesleyan University, 1831-1910: Collegiate Enterprise in New England. Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0-8195-6360-9. 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 0-8018-7114-X. 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 trio.[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 0-7914-0010-7. 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."]
It can refer to the schools of the modern-day New England Small College Athletic Conference[As of 2005, the NESCAC (website) includes: Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams.][An explanation of "Little Ivy" at athletesadvisor.com] (NESCAC), which includes the "Little Three" together with Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut, Middlebury, Tufts, Hamilton, and Trinity.
Greene and Greene's guide, 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."[Greene, Howard and Mathew Greene (2000) Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning: The Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence, HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-095362-4, excerpt at HarperCollins.com]
Some schools that are often called "Little Ivies" include:
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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See also
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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."
Boston Globe, September 20, 1985, p. 36 refers to "The New England Small College Athletic Conference (alias NESCAC or the 'Little Ivies')".
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 'Little Ivies' big lure for black scholars, May 29, 2006: mentions Amherst, Middlebury, Holy Cross, Bowdoin, Hampshire as "colleges that are sometimes known as 'little Ivies,' because they have the image of exclusivity typical of Ivy League schools."
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