IvyPlus or Ivy Plus is a metonym used in the United States to refer to the universities of the Ivy League, in addition to a small group of non-Ivy League universities generally considered to hold an equivalent status in American higher education. Though exact definitions of the non-Ivy League IvyPlus schools vary, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of Chicago are commonly identified.
The Ivy League is a university athletic league comprising eight universities in the Northeastern United States that, according to U.S. News and World Report , "are considered the most sought-after institutions of higher learning in the country". [1] Its members are: Brown University, Cornell University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. [1]
There is no common definition as to what non-Ivy League schools are part of the IvyPlus, though Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of Chicago have been cited as IvyPlus institutions by multiple sources. [2] [3] [4] [5] Caltech, [4] Northwestern University, [4] Vanderbilt University, [4] and Washington University in St. Louis [4] have occasionally been identified as non-Ivy League IvyPlus schools.
The IvyPlus Exchange Scholars Program, an institutionally-recognized graduate exchange program operated by a consortium of universities, includes the University of California Berkeley, the University of Chicago, MIT, and Stanford University among its non-Ivy League members. [6] The IvyPlus Libraries Confederation, an interlibrary loan service maintained by a consortium of universities, includes Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, MIT, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago among its non-Ivy League members.
A 2023 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that, while "less than half of one percent of Americans attend Ivy-Plus colleges", they "account for more than 10 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs, a quarter of U.S. senators, and three-fourths of Supreme Court justices appointed in the last half-century". The study defined "IvyPlus" as the Ivy League institutions plus Chicago, Duke, MIT, and Stanford. [7]