Ivy League (Ivies, Ancient Eight)
Ivy League logo
Established	1954
Association	NCAA
Division	Division I FCS
Members	8
Sports fielded	33 (men's: 17; women's: 16)
Region	Northeast
Headquarters	Princeton, New Jersey
Commissioner	Robin Harris[1] (since 2009)
Website	ivyleaguesports.com
Locations

The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group.^[2] The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. The term Ivy League also has connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism.

The term became official after the formation of the NCAA Division I athletic conference in 1954.^[3] The use of the phrase is no longer limited to athletics, and now represents an educational philosophy inherent to the nation's oldest schools.^[4] Seven of the eight schools were founded during the United States colonial period; the exception is Cornell, which was founded in 1865. Ivy League institutions, therefore, account for seven of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution.

Ivy League schools are often viewed by the public as some of the most prestigious and are often ranked amongst the best universities in the United States and worldwide.^[5] All of the Ivy League's institutions place within the top 16 of the U.S. News & World Report college and university rankings, including the top four schools and five of the top nine. A member of the Ivy League has been the U.S. News number-one-ranked university in each of the past twelve years: Princeton University five times, Harvard University twice, and the two schools tied for first five times.^[6]

The Ivies are all in the Northeast geographic region of the United States. All eight schools receive millions of dollars in research grants and other subsidies from federal and state government.

Undergraduate enrollments among the Ivy League schools range from about 4,000 to 14,000,^[7] making them larger than those of a typical private liberal arts college and smaller than a typical public state university. Overall enrollments range from approximately 5,900 in the case of Dartmouth to over 20,000 in the case of Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Penn. Ivy League university financial endowments range from Brown's $2.2 billion to Harvard's $32 billion,^[8] the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world.^[9]

Locations of Ivy League schools

Members[link]

History[link]

Year founded[link]

Note: Six of the eight Ivy League universities consider their founding dates to be simply the date that they received their charters and thus became legal corporations with the authority to grant academic degrees. Harvard University uses the date that the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony formally allocated funds for the creation of a college. The University of Pennsylvania initially considered its founding date to be 1750; this is the year which appears on the first iteration of the university seal.^[27] Sometime in Penn's early history, it began to refer to 1749 as its founding date; this year was used for over a century. In 1899, the university's Board of Trustees voted to change the founding date again, this time to 1740, in order to make their institution appear older than Princeton University, which had been chartered in 1746.^[21] "Religious affiliation" refers to financial sponsorship, formal association with, and promotion by, a religious denomination. All of the schools in the Ivy League are private and not currently associated with any religion.

Origin of the name[link]

Students have long revered the ivied walls of older colleges. "Planting the ivy" was a customary class day ceremony at many colleges in the late 1800s. In 1893 an alumnus told the Harvard Crimson, "In 1850, class day was placed upon the University Calendar.... the custom of planting the ivy, while the ivy oration was delivered, arose about this time."^[28] Ivy planting ceremonies are reported for Yale,^[29] Simmons,^[30] Bryn Mawr^[31] and many others. Princeton's "Ivy Club" was founded in 1879.^[32]

The first usage of Ivy in reference to a group of colleges is from sportswriter Stanley Woodward (1895–1965).

A proportion of our eastern ivy colleges are meeting little fellows another Saturday before plunging into the strife and the turmoil.

—Stanley Woodward, New York Tribune, October 14, 1933, describing the football season^[33]

According to the book Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1988), author William Morris writes that Stanley Woodward actually took the term from fellow New York Tribune sportswriter Caswell Adams. Morris writes that during the 1930s, the Fordham University football team was running roughshod over all its opponents. One day in the sports room at the Tribune, the merits of Fordham's football team were being compared to those of Princeton and Columbia. Adams remarked disparagingly of the latter two, saying they were "only Ivy League." Woodward, the sports editor of the Tribune, picked up the term and printed the next day.

Note though that in the above quote Woodward used the term ivy college, not ivy league as Adams is said to have used, so there is a discrepancy in this theory, although it seems certain the term ivy college and shortly later Ivy League acquired its name from the sports world.

The first known instance of the term Ivy League being used appeared in The Christian Science Monitor on February 7, 1935.^[34][35][36] Several sportswriters and other journalists used the term shortly later to refer to the older colleges, those along the northeastern seaboard of the United States, chiefly the nine institutions with origins dating from the colonial era, together with the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Naval Academy, and a few others. These schools were known for their long-standing traditions in intercollegiate athletics, often being the first schools to participate in such activities. However, at this time, none of these institutions would make efforts to form an athletic league.

Ivy covering West College, Princeton University

The Ivy League universities are also called the "Ancient Eight" or simply the Ivies.

A common folk etymology attributes the name to the Roman numerals for four (IV), asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins helped to perpetuate this belief. The supposed "IV League" was formed over a century ago and consisted of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a 4th school that varies depending on who is telling the story.^[37][38][39] However, it is clear that Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia met on November 23, 1876 at the so-called Massasoit Convention to decide on uniform rules for the emerging game of football, which rapidly spread.^[40]

In addition, representatives from four schools: Rutgers, Princeton, Yale, and Columbia, met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan on October 19, 1873, to establish a set of rules governing their intercollegiate athletic competition, and particularly to codify the new game of college football (which at the time, largely resembled what is currently called rugby).^[41] Though invited, Harvard chose not to attend. While no formal organization or conference was established, the results of this meeting governed athletic events between these schools well into the 20th century.^[42][43]

Before there was an Ivy League[link]

Seven of the Ivy League schools were founded before the American Revolution; Cornell was founded just after the American Civil War. These seven provided the overwhelming majority of the higher education in the Northern and Middle Colonies; their early faculties and founding boards were largely, therefore, drawn from other Ivy League institutions; there were also some British graduates from the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the University of Edinburgh, and elsewhere. Similarly, the founder of The College of William & Mary, in 1693, was a British graduate of the University of Edinburgh. Cornell provided Stanford University with its first president.

The influence of these institutions on the founding of other colleges and universities is notable. This included the Southern public college movement which blossomed in the first two decades of the 19th century when Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia established what became the flagship universities for each of these states. In 1801 a majority of the first board of trustees for what became the University of South Carolina were Princeton alumni. They appointed Jonathan Maxcy, a Brown graduate, as the university's first president. Thomas Cooper, an Oxford alumnus and University of Pennsylvania faculty member became the second president of the South Carolina college. The founders of the University of California came from Yale, hence the school colors of University of California are Yale Blue and California Gold.^[44]

Some of the Ivy League schools have identifiable Protestant roots, while others were founded as nonsectarian schools. Church of England King's College broke up during the Revolution and was reformed as public nonsectarian Columbia College. In the early nineteenth century, the specific purpose of training Calvinist ministers was handed off to theological seminaries, but a denominational tone and such relics as compulsory chapel often lasted well into the twentieth century. Penn and Brown were officially founded as nonsectarian schools. Brown's charter promised no religious tests and "full liberty of conscience", but placed control in the hands of a board of twenty-two Baptists, five Quakers, four Congregationalists, and five Episcopalians. Cornell has been strongly nonsectarian from its founding.

"Ivy League" is sometimes used as a way of referring to an elite class, even though institutions such as Cornell University were among the first in the United States to reject racial and gender discrimination in their admissions policies. This sense dates back to at least 1935.^[45] Novels^[46] and memoirs^[47] attest this sense, as a social elite; to some degree independent of the actual schools.

After the Second World War, the present Ivy League institutions slowly widened their selection of students. They had always had distinguished faculties; some of the first Americans with doctorates had taught for them; but they now decided that they could not both be world-class research institutions and be competitive in the highest ranks of American college sport; in addition, the schools experienced the scandals of any other big-time football programs, although more quietly.^[48]

History of the athletic league[link]

The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. Rowing teams from Harvard and Yale met in the first sporting event held between students of two U.S. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, on August 3, 1852. Harvard's team, "The Oneida", won the race and was presented with trophy black walnut oars from then presidential nominee General Franklin Pierce.

The Palestra, Penn's basketball arena

The first formal athletic league involving eventual Ivy League schools (or any US colleges, for that matter) was created in 1870 with the formation of the Rowing Association of American Colleges. The RAAC hosted a de-facto national championship in rowing during the period 1870–1894. In 1895, Cornell, Columbia, and Pennsylvania founded the Intercollegiate Rowing Association, which remains the oldest collegiate athletic organizing body in the US. To this day, the IRA Championship Regatta determines the national champion in rowing and all of the Ivies are regularly invited to compete. A basketball league was later created in 1902, when Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Yale and Princeton formed the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League; they were later joined by Penn, Dartmouth and Brown. In 1906, the organization that eventually became the National Collegiate Athletic Association was formed, primarily to formalize rules for the emerging sport of football. But of the 39 original member colleges in the NCAA, only two of them (Dartmouth and Pennsylvania) later became Ivies.

Before the formal establishment of the Ivy League, there was an "unwritten and unspoken agreement among certain Eastern colleges on athletic relations". In 1935, the Associated Press reported on an example of collaboration between the schools:

The athletic authorities of the so-called "Ivy League" are considering drastic measures to curb the increasing tendency toward riotous attacks on goal posts and other encroachments by spectators on playing fields.

—The Associated Press, The New York Times^[49]

Despite such collaboration, the universities did not seem to consider the formation of the league as imminent. Romeyn Berry, Cornell's manager of athletics, reported the situation in January 1936 as follows:

I can say with certainty that in the last five years—and markedly in the last three months—there has been a strong drift among the eight or ten universities of the East which see a good deal of one another in sport toward a closer bond of confidence and cooperation and toward the formation of a common front against the threat of a breakdown in the ideals of amateur sport in the interests of supposed expediency. Please do not regard that statement as implying the organization of an Eastern conference or even a poetic "Ivy League". That sort of thing does not seem to be in the cards at the moment.^[50]

Within a year of this statement and having held one-month-long discussions about the proposal, on December 3, 1936, the idea of "the formation of an Ivy League" gained enough traction among the undergraduate bodies of the universities that the Columbia Daily Spectator, The Cornell Daily Sun, The Dartmouth, The Harvard Crimson, The Daily Pennsylvanian, The Daily Princetonian and the Yale Daily News would simultaneously run an editorial entitled "Now Is the Time", encouraging the seven universities to form the league in an effort to preserve the ideals of athletics.^[51] Part of the editorial read as follows:

The Ivy League exists already in the minds of a good many of those connected with football, and we fail to see why the seven schools concerned should be satisfied to let it exist as a purely nebulous entity where there are so many practical benefits which would be possible under definite organized association. The seven colleges involved fall naturally together by reason of their common interests and similar general standards and by dint of their established national reputation they are in a particularly advantageous position to assume leadership for the preservation of the ideals of intercollegiate athletics.^[52]

The proposal did not succeed—on January 11, 1937, the athletic authorities at the schools rejected the "possibility of a heptagonal league in football such as these institutions maintain in basketball, baseball and track." However, they noted that the league "has such promising possibilities that it may not be dismissed and must be the subject of further consideration."^[53]

In 1945 the presidents of the eight schools signed the first Ivy Group Agreement, which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for the football teams. The principles established reiterated those put forward in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Presidents' Agreement of 1916. The Ivy Group Agreement established the core tenet that an applicant's ability to play on a team would not influence admissions decisions:

The members of the Group reaffirm their prohibition of athletic scholarships. Athletes shall be admitted as students and awarded financial aid only on the basis of the same academic standards and economic need as are applied to all other students.^[54]

In 1954, the date generally accepted as the birth of the Ivy League, the presidents extended the Ivy Group Agreement to all intercollegiate sports. Competition began with the 1956 season.

As late as the 1960s many of the Ivy League universities' undergraduate programs remained open only to men, with Cornell the only one to have been coeducational from its founding (1865) and Columbia being the last (1983) to become coeducational. Before they became coeducational, many of the Ivy schools maintained extensive social ties with nearby Seven Sisters women's colleges, including weekend visits, dances and parties inviting Ivy and Seven Sisters students to mingle. This was the case not only at Barnard College and Radcliffe College, which are adjacent to Columbia and Harvard, but at more distant institutions as well. The movie Animal House includes a satiric version of the formerly common visits by Dartmouth men to Massachusetts to meet Smith and Mount Holyoke women, a drive of more than two hours. As noted by Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra, "The 'Seven Sisters' was the name given to Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Radcliffe, because of their parallel to the Ivy League men’s colleges."^[55]

In 1983, following the admission of women to Columbia College, Columbia University and Barnard College entered into an athletic consortium agreement by which students from both schools compete together on Columbia University women's athletic teams, which replaced the women's teams previously sponsored by Barnard.

Cohesiveness of the group[link]

The Ivy League schools are highly selective, with acceptance rates ranging from 6 to 16 percent.^[56]

These universities compete in many ways, as illustrated by Yale's aggressive reaction to an incident in 2002. A Princeton admissions staffer mentioned at a joint meeting of all eight Ivy admissions departments that he and others from his office had logged onto the Yale admissions website to see how their system to notify applicants worked. At the time, Princeton and many other colleges were considering a transition from traditional snail mail to website notification, a process which Yale had already completed. No immediate reaction from the group resulted at the initial meeting, as was the case when the same individual brought up the subject again at a subsequent conference one month later. He told the others present that he and his colleagues had used the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of some Princeton applicants who might have also applied to Yale. In particular, the Princeton representative brought up the topic because he was surprised to find that Yale had used no password besides a Social Security number. Despite the fact that the Princeton staffer had proactively volunteered the information and Yale officials at both meetings had voiced no objection, the Yale administration examined its computer records and called the FBI to complain that its computers had been "hacked," then issued a press release to that effect. After this apparent attempt to embarrass Princeton publicly, the admissions official at the center of the controversy was moved to a different department and the university's dean of admissions Fred Hargadon retired at the end of the academic year, though Princeton president Shirley Tilghman said that the dean's decision to retire was unconnected to the incident.^[57] In 2007, Princeton honored the dean by naming a new campus dormitory after him.

Collaboration between the member schools is illustrated by the student-led Ivy Council that meets in the fall and spring of each year, with representatives from every Ivy League school.

Social elitism[link]

The phrase Ivy League historically has been perceived as connected not only with academic excellence, but also with social elitism. In 1936, sportswriter John Kieran noted that student editors at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Penn were advocating the formation of an athletic association. In urging them to consider "Army and Navy and Georgetown and Fordham and Syracuse and Brown and Pitt" as candidates for membership, he exhorted:

A cartoon portrait of the stereotypical Columbia man in the 20th century

It would be well for the proponents of the Ivy League to make it clear (to themselves especially) that the proposed group would be inclusive but not "exclusive" as this term is used with a slight up-tilting of the tip of the nose.^[58]

The Ivy League has sometimes been associated with the WASP community.^[59] Phrases such as "Ivy League snobbery"^[60] are ubiquitous in nonfiction and fiction writing of the twentieth century. A Louis Auchincloss character dreads "the aridity of snobbery which he knew infected the Ivy League colleges".^[46] A business writer, warning in 2001 against discriminatory hiring, presented a cautionary example of an attitude to avoid (the bracketed phrase is his):

We Ivy Leaguers [read: mostly white and Anglo] know that an Ivy League degree is a mark of the kind of person who is likely to succeed in this organization.^[61]

Aspects of Ivy stereotyping were illustrated during the 1988 presidential election, when George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis (graduate of Harvard Law School) for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique."^[62] New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd asked "Wasn't this a case of the pot calling the kettle elite?" Bush explained however that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it.... Harvard boutique to me has the connotation of liberalism and elitism" and said Harvard in his remark was intended to represent "a philosophical enclave" and not a statement about class.^[63] Columnist Russell Baker opined that "Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets."^[64] Still, the last four presidents have all attended Ivy League schools for at least part of their education—George H.W. Bush (Yale undergrad), Bill Clinton (Yale Law School), George W. Bush (Yale undergrad, Harvard Business School), and Barack Obama (Columbia undergrad, Harvard Law School).

Cooperation[link]

Up until recently, seven of the eight schools (Harvard excluded) participated in the Borrow Direct interlibrary loan program, making a total of 88 million items available to participants with a waiting period of four working days.^[65] This ILL program is not affiliated with the formal Ivy arrangement. Harvard and MIT joined the Direct Borrow partnership in January 2011, together contributing over 70 million books to the existing collection.^[66]

The governing body of the Ivy League is the Council of Ivy Group Presidents. During their meetings, the presidents often discuss common procedures and initiatives.

Competition and athletics[link]

A Cornell Big Red college baseball player from 1908.

Ivy champions are recognized in 33 men's and women's sports. In some sports, Ivy teams actually compete as members of another league, the Ivy championship being decided by isolating the members' records in play against each other; for example, the six league members who participate in ice hockey do so as members of ECAC Hockey, but an Ivy champion is extrapolated each year. Unlike all other Division I basketball conferences, the Ivy League has no tournament for the league title;^[67] the school with the best conference record represents the conference in the Division I NCAA Basketball Tournament (with a playoff, or playoffs, in the case of a tie).^[68] Since its inception, an Ivy League school has yet to win either the men's or women's Division I NCAA Basketball Tournament.

On average, each Ivy school has more than 35 varsity teams. All eight are in the top 20 for number of sports offered for both men and women among Division I schools. Unlike most Division I athletic conferences, the Ivy League prohibits the granting of athletic scholarships; all scholarships awarded are need-based (financial aid).^[69] Ivy League teams' non-league games are usually against the members of the Patriot League, which have similar academic standards and athletic scholarship policies.

In the time before recruiting for college sports became dominated by those offering athletic scholarships and lowered academic standards for athletes, the Ivy League was successful in many sports relative to other universities in the country. In particular, Princeton won 24 recognized national championships in college football (last in 1911), and Yale won 19 (last in 1927). Both of these totals are considerably higher than those of other historically strong programs such as Alabama, which has won 13, Notre Dame, which has won 12, and USC, which has won 11. Yale, whose coach Walter Camp was the "Father of American Football," held on to its place as the all-time wins leader in college football throughout the entire 20th century, but was finally passed by Michigan on November 10, 2001. Currently Dartmouth holds the record for most Ivy League football titles, with 17.

Beginning with the 1982 football season, the Ivy League has competed in Division I-AA (renamed FCS in 2006).^[70] The Ivy League teams are eligible for the FCS tournament held to determine the national champion, and the league champion receives an automatic bid (and any other team may qualify for an at-large selection) from the NCAA. Through the 2009 season, all eligible teams have declined the invitation, citing rules governing the league's academic concerns posed by the extended December schedule. The Ivy League plays a strict 10 game schedule, compared to other FCS members' schedules of 11 or 12 regular season games, plus post-season, which was expanded in 2010 to five rounds with 20 teams, with a bye week for the top 12 teams. Football is the only sport in which the Ivy League declines to compete for a national title.

The Yale Bowl during The Game.

Although no longer as successful nationally as they once were in many of the more popular college sports, the Ivy League is still competitive in others. One such example is rowing. All of the Ivies have historically been among the top crews in the nation, and most continue to be so today. Cornell's 38 national championships in men's rowing makes that program perhaps the most decorated varsity athletic program in the country in any sport. Most recently, on the men's side, Harvard won the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships in 2003, 2004, 2005, and on the women's side Brown won the team championship in 2007, 2008 and 2011 NCAA Rowing Championships and Yale won the NCAA title for the I-eight event (the most elite event) in 2007, 2008 and 2010. Additionally, Cornell's men's lightweight team won back to back to back IRA National Championships in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The Ivy League schools are also very competitive in men's lacrosse and both men's and women's hockey.

The Ivy League is home to some of the oldest college rugby teams. These teams meet annually to compete in a tourney. The 2006 Ivy League Tournament was hosted by Yale, and the 2005 tournament was hosted by Penn. Though the women's rugby teams at the Ivy League schools are much younger, they too compete in an annual Ivy League Tournament, often hosted by Brown.

Internal rivalries[link]

Rivalries run deep in the Ivy League. For instance, Harvard and Yale are celebrated football and crew rivals. Princeton and Penn are longstanding men's basketball rivals;^[71] "Puck Frinceton", and "Pennetrate the Puss" t-shirts are worn at games.^[72] In only five instances in the history of Ivy League basketball, and in only five seasons since Dartmouth's 1957–58 title, has neither Penn nor Princeton won at least a share of the Ivy League title in basketball,^[73] with each champion or co-champion 25 times. Penn has won 21 outright, Princeton 18 outright. Princeton has been a co-champion 7 times, sharing 4 of those titles with Penn (these 4 seasons represent the only times Penn has been co-champion). Princeton and Harvard are the reigning (2011) Ivy League men's basketball co-champions.

Rivalries exist between other Ivy league teams in other sports, including Cornell and Harvard in hockey (the only two League members to have won the NCAA tournament), Harvard and Princeton in swimming, and Harvard and Penn in football (Penn and Harvard have each had two unbeaten seasons since 2001).^[74] In men's lacrosse, Cornell and Princeton are perennial rivals, and they are the only two Ivy League teams to have won the NCAA tournament. In 2009, the Big Red and Tigers met for their 70th game in the NCAA tournament.^[75] No team other than Harvard or Princeton has won the men's swimming conference title outright since 1972, although Yale, Columbia, and Cornell have shared the title with Harvard and Princeton during this time.

Football rivalries[link]

Athletic facilities[link]

Other Ivies[link]

Marketing groups, journalists, and some educators sometimes promote other colleges as "Ivies," as in Little Ivies (colloquialism referring to a group of small, selective American liberal arts colleges), Public Ivies or Southern Ivies. These uses of Ivy are intended to promote the other schools by comparing them to the Ivy League. For example, in the 2007 edition of Newsweek's How to Get Into College Now, the editors designated twenty-five schools as "New Ivies."^[78]

The term "Ivy Plus" is sometimes used to refer to the Ancient Eight plus several other schools for purposes of alumni associations,^[79][80] university affiliations,^{[80][81][82][83]} or endowment comparisons.^{[84][85][86][87]} In his book Untangling the Ivy League, Zawel writes, "The inclusion of non-Ivy League schools under this term is commonplace for some schools and extremely rare for others. Among these other schools, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University are almost always included." "The University of Chicago and Duke University are often included as well."^[80]

See also[link]

University portal

• Little Three—three liberal arts colleges in New England (Amherst, Wesleyan, and Williams), in contrast to the Big Three (a term used to refer to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton) of the Ivy League
• Big Ten Conference—oldest Division I college athletic conference in the United States.
• List of Ivy League law schools—schools of the Ivy League universities that offer various law degrees.
• List of Ivy League medical schools—schools of the Ivy League universities that offer medical education (both MDs and PhDs).
• List of Ivy League business schools—schools of the Ivy League universities that offer various business degrees, especially the MBA.
• Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence
• Jesuit Ivy—complementary use of Ivy to characterize Boston College
• Black Ivy League—informal list of colleges that attracted top African American students prior to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
• Public Ivy—is a term coined by Richard Moll to refer to universities which "provide an Ivy League collegiate experience at a public school price."

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

This Is Ivy League is an indie band formed in 2005 by friends Ryland Blackinton and Alex Suarez (of Cobra Starship).

Formation of This Is Ivy League[link]

Alex and Ryland met in 1997 in high school. Both were avid guitar players and both played in local bands with varying degrees of accolade. Alex got Ryland a job waiting tables at "Mr. Deli's Jewish Delicatessan," in Boca Raton, Florida. A few years later, Alex went off to pursue a degree in the culinary arts while Ryland procured his BFA in Acting. The two lost touch for seven years. This Is Ivy League formed in August 2005 when Ryland discovered that his old friend Alex was not only still playing music but living just ten minutes away from him in Brooklyn, NY. The duo quickly began writing songs together which would later become the indie/pop/folk sound that we know as This Is Ivy League.^[1]

Cobra Starship[link]

Blackinton and Suarez were approached to join Gabe Saporta's newly formed band Cobra Starship after he found fast success with the hit song, "Snakes on a Plane (Bring it)". The song was featured on the soundtrack for the film Snakes on a Plane and the band was offered a record deal from Pete Wentz's Fueled By Ramen Records imprint, Decaydance. Ryland and Alex accepted and have contributed to all four full-length albums and completed several international tours with Cobra Starship since.

Keeping This Is Ivy League alive[link]

Although they spent most of their time touring with Cobra Starship, Alex and Ryland continued to write songs for This Is Ivy League, vowing to record an album once Cobra settled down. The album was released on April 1, 2008 on TwentySeven Records. The album, like the London Bridges EP, was recorded entirely between the duo's Brooklyn apartments.

The accompanying video for the song "London Bridges" has already been singled out by Pitchfork which said, "...the clip creates and sustains a soft-focus weirdness, borrowing all the elements you’d expect from a postmillennial Chad & Jeremy—blazers, bicycles, merry-go-rounds, a park in autumn—while adding a few new flourishes—women in animal costumes, gently evocative use of color and pattern. Alex Suarez and Ryland Blackinton croon their crisp harmonies, finishing each other’s sentences and riffs, nearly symmetrical as they perform atop their pedestals for the animal woman".

Ryland and Alex have commitments with Cobra Starship, but manage to make time for fans of This Is Ivy League, whether it be on Myspace, Livejournal or just in conversation outside of a show.

Discography[link]

• London Bridges EP
• This Is Ivy League

References[link]

External links[link]

• Twenty Seven Records official website
• Rehearsal Space featuring Alex Suarez - a 2008 featurette about the writing of This is Ivy League's debut album, as well as the difficulties of being in two bands at once

Cydel Young^[1] (born September 15, 1984),^[1] better known by his stage name CyHi the Prynce (sometimes stylized as CyHi Da Prynce), is an American hip hop recording artist from Stone Mountain, Georgia.^[2][3] He is signed to Akon's Konvict Muzik label, also Bu Thiam's BuVision label, Kanye West's GOOD Music label and Def Jam Recordings. Cyhi has made appearances on Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and has released five mixtapes, with the latest being Jack of All Trades.

Early life[link]

Growing up, Cydel played various sports including football, basketball, and track and field, in addition to singing in school choirs and participating in school plays and dances. He was raised Baptist by strict parents, who didn't allow him to listen to rap music until he was 12 years of age. However, Young cites his parents' methods as a foundation upon which he could build himself in character.

Career[link]

Cyhi first gained major buzz in 2010 when he received a co-sign from Kanye West.^[4][5] He reports that the singer Beyonce, a friend of West and the wife of his mentor, Jay-Z, convinced Kanye to sign him to the rapper/producer's GOOD Music label.^[6] This culminated in Cydel's inclusion on the popular single to Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, "So Appalled" as well as several tracks from West's GOOD Fridays series.

His album Hardway Musical, which was announced on his Jack of All Trades mixtape is due out in 2012. He has already recorded with Royal Flush II producer CPK, and plans to work further with previous collaborators the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, No I.D. and Kanye West, as well as DJ Toomp, The Alchemist and Just Blaze.^[7]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

• Hardway Musical (TBA)

Collaborative albums[link]

• Cruel Summer (with GOOD Music) (2012)

Mixtapes[link]

• Wat Da Dec Been Missin (2009)
• Wat Da Dec Been Missin Vol 2 (2009)
• The Prynce of Jacks (2010)
• Royal Flush (2010)
• Royal Flush II (2011)
• Jack of All Trades (2011)
• The Ivy League Club (2012)

Guest appearances[link]

References[link]

^[1] http://www.reverbnation.com/cyhidaprynce

External links[link]

• Cyhi the Prynce on Twitter
• www.nancioradioshow.com - Nanci O Is Hip Hop Interview With CyHi The Prynce
• Cyhi the Prynce on Facebook