Eight private universities in the northeastern U.S. are called Ivy League schools. The term, Ivy League, was originally coined in the 1930s to describe an athletics division.

The eight schools are Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Columbia University, Brown University, Dartmouth College, and Cornell University.

Harvard, the oldest university in the U.S., was founded in 1636. It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yale in New Haven, Connecticut was founded in 1701. The University of Pennsylvania, also known as Penn or UPenn, is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1740. Princeton was founded in 1746. It is in Princeton, New Jersey.

Columbia in New York City was founded in 1754. Brown founded in 1764 is in Providence, Rhode Island. Dartmouth, established in 1769, is in Hanover, New Hampshire. Cornell, established in 1865, is in Ithaca, New York.

Originally, more, not eight, schools were Ivy League schools, or simply the Ivies. Other schools in the northeastern seaboard of the U.S., such as the U.S. Military Academy, or West Point founded in 1802, and the U.S. Naval Academy established in 1845, were also called Ivies at first.

Many people now think of academic superiority and the difficulties of gaining entry to these universities, whenever they hear the term Ivy League. Many of the old buildings in these highly respected institutions are covered with ivy vines.