In the United States, "Ivy Plus" is an informal term that refers to the Ivy League universities and a small group of non-Ivy private universities regarded as their peers in prestige and academic standing. For public universities, a similar term is Public Ivy.
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 Ivy Plus, though Duke University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago are the most commonly cited Ivy Plus institutions by multiple sources. [2] [3] [4] [5] Other institutions such as Caltech, [4] [6] Georgetown University, [7] [6] Northwestern University, [4] [6] Vanderbilt University, [4] and Washington University in St. Louis [4] have occasionally been identified as non-Ivy League Ivy Plus schools.
The Ivy Plus Sustainability Consortium, established in 2007 to "advance sustainability in higher education," includes the University of Chicago, Duke University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, MIT, and Stanford University alongside the eight Ivy League institutions. [8] [9]
The Ivy Plus Exchange Scholars Program, an institutionally-recognized graduate exchange program operated by a consortium of universities, includes UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago, MIT, and Stanford University among its non-Ivy League members. [10]
The Ivy Plus 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. [11]
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 "Ivy Plus" as the Ivy League institutions plus Chicago, Duke, MIT, and Stanford. [12]