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 . In addition, the Ivies have a rigid policy against redshirting, even for medical reasons; an athlete loses a year of eligibility for every year enrolled at an Ivy institution. Additionally, the Ivies prohibit graduate students from participating in intercollegiate athletics, even if they have remaining athletic eligibility.
The only exception to the ban on graduate students is that seniors graduating in 2021 are being allowed to play at their current institutions as graduate students in 2021–22. This was a one-time-only response to the Ivies shutting down most intercollegiate athletics in 2020–21 due to COVID-19. Ivy League teams' non-league games are often against the members of the Patriot League, which have similar academic standards and athletic scholarship policies . In particular, Princeton won 26 recognized national championships in college football , and Yale won 18 .
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. Both of these totals are considerably higher than those of other historically strong programs such as Alabama, which has won 15, Notre Dame, which claims 11 but is credited by many sources with 13, and USC, which has won 11. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn each have over a dozen former scholar-athletes enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Currently Dartmouth holds the record for most Ivy League football titles, with 18, followed closely by Harvard and Penn, each with 17 titles. In addition, the Ivy League has produced Super Bowl winners Kevin Boothe , two-time Pro Bowler Zak DeOssie , Sean Morey , All-Pro selection Matt Birk , Calvin Hill , Derrick Harmon and 1999 "Mr. Irrelevant" Jim Finn . Yale's placement in the Ivies is a tale of two extremes when it comes to different sports.
They finished in the top three for 11 of the 26 represented, but also in the bottom three for eight sports. Thus, according to the law of averages, they land smack in the middle of our rankings at No. 4 overall. When it comes to the big three college sports, Yale takes the top prize.
The Bulldogs have ranked first in basketball over the past five years , and second in football and baseball . But none of these have even been their best program as they have dominated men's lacrosse winning four out of the last five seasons. They are also the only team to have won an official NCAA championship in the last five years defeating Duke in 2018 before running it back to the finals the next year where they were runners-up to Virginia.
Unlike other universities on this list like Harvard or Princeton which see their women's program's outpace their men's, Yale sees the opposite effect. Men's sports have 14 Ivy titles compared to two for the women and they finish about one position higher on average for all respective sports. Keeping with the tale of two extremes, the women's lacrosse team has been the weakest of the Ivies the past five years. One would think that the success of men's and women's programs are correlated but this provides an interesting area for further exploration.
Yale actually has the most NCAA recognized championships in the Ivies but are heavily reliant on men's golf which account for 27 of them. After their loss to the Crimson in their last game of the season, Yale still leads the all-time series ( ) and might be considered the best football Ivy of all-time, but has only won four times in the last 20 years. But, as the Harvard case seems poised to inch its way to the Supreme Court, where a majority of justices could roll back affirmative action, it's worth considering how other admissions practices put a thumb on the scale for white students. Princeton tops the list for the best athletic Ivy of the past five years. In order to land themselves at the top, the Tigers both dominate certain sports and are consistently solid across all others.
They ranked at least fifth or higher out of the eight Ivies in all but one sport as they will rarely be found at the bottom of the conference standing list. Princeton has been the absolute leader of the Ivies in men's indoor track each of the last five years and women's tennis, lacrosse, and volleyball for four of the last five years. When it comes to the big two, Princeton has also been solid winning the Ivies twice in football and once in basketball where they missed a last second go-ahead three in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Notre Dame. Women's lacrosse had three NCAA quarterfinal appearances and soccer had one. The 2019 field hockey squad were the NCAA runner-ups to current three-time reigning champion University of North Carolina. Over the past five years, Princeton has won 42 total Ivy championships out of the possible 130 .
That is about 2.5 times as much as we would expect an Ivy to win if all were equal . Princeton also has the biggest discrepancy between its men's and women's program with 15 Ivy men's titles and 27 for women's and more than a point separating their average standing placement. In addition, over the history of the Ivy League Princeton leads the pack with 476 league championships and 24 national NCAA championships. It is not much of a debate that the Princeton Tigers are the powerhouse athletic program of the Ivy League and can contend on a national level.
Indian student athletes have an edge on games like tennis, golf, field hockey and squash. There are many universities that recruit athletes for these individual and team sports. The National Collegiate Athletics Association , which governs university sports teams, usually divides universities into Division I, II and III depending on the level of scholarship offered by each university. Ivy League universities do not provide sports scholarships, but still admit sportspersons, and if required, give financial aid depending on family incomes also known as need based scholarships.
Although this group of elite schools is considered to be part of one big league of the elite, there have been plenty of internal rivalries over the years. Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania have been longtime basketball rivals. Cornell and Harvard have been hockey rivals for many years, and Harvard and Penn have beenlong time football rivals. Many other Ivy League schools have had serious sports rivalries as well.
The Yale and Princeton rivalry is considered the country's second-oldest college rivalry behind Lehigh University and Lafayette College. The sports that these colleges play were so popular that some teams began playing games in New York City so spectators could come from far away and watch the games. The popularity of both the athletes who played and the college team rivalries brought in a good deal of attention to the schools as well as revenue from ticket sales. Mostly, these rivalries are a matter of opinion in terms of which school has the most honor graduates, which schools offer the most prestigious scholarships, and what famous graduates have come from each school.
Summary – Ivy Coaches cannot guarantee you admission and do not make admissions decisions – admission personnel make these decisions. While a coach may tell you that you will get in, there are cases where S-A's are denied admission by the admissions board after a coach has extended a verbal offer. This sometimes happens when a new admissions director or athletic director is hired or the school got some bad publicity with other S-A's and is trying to avoid accepting future players that may struggle academically. In most cases, if a coach extends a verbal offer to you, your credentials have been reviewed by admissions and the coach has received the OK to extend an offer.
Rarely will a coach extend an offer before your information is reviewed by the admissions department, but this obviously doesn't mean you are guaranteed admission. Recruiting at the Ivy League is fierce business and while all Ivy Schools are top academic institutions, they take their athletics very seriously. Because admission spots are so precious and there is no NLI program, Ivy coaches will compete very hard for the same athletes and will often pressure you to apply early or to give a verbal offer. If you are a talented athlete and a gifted academic student, then you can increase your chances of being accepted to an Ivy school provided that you are ready to commit.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for reducing varsity teams at colleges may simply be the lack of visibility of certain sports. When is the last time you watched a collegiate women's squash finals or a college wrestling championship? Even the Olympics are eliminating wrestling as an event, so why should the sport continue in the Ivies?
Certainly, high-profile sports will continue to flourish at universities. Unquestionably, students who play sports that generate buzz and revenue for a particular school will continue to be afforded admissions advantages. However, student athletes who play less popular sports may well find that sport losing viability. Generally, athletes choose universities according to what they aspire to do after completing their education.
They choose a top sporting university (according to the division they are in the NCAA — generally D1 colleges are the most superior, then come D2 and so on) if they wish to compete with the best teams in the collegiate circuit. Such a university is more likely to offer a sports scholarship depending on the students'sporting talent. However, those who plan to use their degree to find a relevant job after graduating, choose a university on the basis of its academic offerings. Some student athletes with a strong academic record and national ranks in sports can choose the best of both worlds.
Although the term Ivy League was first used in sports news reporting in the 1930s, it wasn't until 1945 that the Ivy League schools got together to formulate athletic policies related to player eligibility, budgets and play season length. The athletic league was formed to create well-rounded students by promoting academic and athletic excellence. Ivy League athletes have always been held to the same athletic standards as their non-athletic peers and do not receive athletic scholarships. The Ivy League school athletic teams gain their reputations from playing in Division I sports conferences. Across all 26 sports, they finished with an average ranking of sixth and only have one Ivy title in the past five years courtesy of women's soccer in 2019.
That 2019 team went in Ivy League play and finished the season ranked No. 23 nationally. This year's team improved on that going undefeated in conference play to win back-to-back Ivy League titles and finished ranked No. 16 in the country. Outside of that, the Bears only finished in the top half of the standings in three of the total 26 sports. Joining Dartmouth in summer 2020, Brown announced that they would be cutting 11 Varsity sports in the name of "streamlining resources to make their programs more competitive". Prior to the announcement, Brown fielded the third most collegiate teams and claimed a "data-driven" approach led them to cut some programs. Brown has 7 all-time NCAA championships (all women's rowing) and 123 Ivy League championships .
Penn comes in at No. 3 so it is no surprise that they consistently finish in the middle of the pack for most Ivy sports. The Quakers don't dominate any Ivy polls but are never at the bottom. They don't rank last in any of the sports over the past five years and only seventh in men's golf and women's volleyball. But on the same token, they only have two first place rankings in men's cross country and women's basketball. The success of their women's basketball team has only started this decade as they had just three Ivy titles before and have won four since 2010. This year's preseason poll has them at No. 2 behind their Ivy rivals in Princeton.
Are Ivy League Schools Good At Sports Their male counterparts have also been solid, winning the Ivies in 2018 where they would lose in the first round of March Madness to No. 1 seed powerhouse Kansas. They have the second most NCAA tournament bids all-time at 24, just one shy of Princeton. Quaker football has also finished in the top half of the standings for the past five years and were co-Ivy champions in 2015 and 2016. Penn ranks fourth in both all-time Ivy championships and over the last five years .
The reason they finish third in our standings overall is their consistency across a range of sports for an average finish of 3.87. Yale has just slightly more overall titles over the past five years but has a lower average standing at 4.31. The Quakers also have the most minimal discrepancy between their men's and women's teams with only a .03 difference between average finishing place. Penn's perfected the model of consistency which has landed them third in our rankings. Similar to our previous article looking at Power 5 schools, we apply the same approach to creating our Ivy League rankings.
Despite not selling out their football stadiums or having large athletic merchandise sales, Ivy League schools actually field some of the most athletic teams in terms of sheer number due to their large endowments . Harvard has the most Division 1 teams in the entire country with 42. For our analysis, we looked at 13 sports in each of men's and women's to give a complete picture of the all-around success of each athletic program. We restricted our analysis to the past five years due to lack of data from prior years and to paint a more accurate picture of the current state of the programs. Only including one year would be too small of a sample size while looking at all of history would favor certain schools over others. Certain Ivies do offer other programs but not all eight had them so they were excluded from the analysis.
For example, Harvard, Princeton, and Brown all have men's water polo programs but they compete in the Northeast Water Polo Conference. Columbia might have the most "volatility" throughout their polls as they can jump from the bottom to the top of the standings in any given year and also fall down. Similar to Yale, the majority of their program success has leaned towards the men's side with nine Ivy titles and an average finish of fourth compared to three titles and an average finish of fifth for the women. The Lions have carved out a niche in some select sports ranking first in baseball, men's tennis, and women's cross country. The tennis program has not dropped an Ivy title since 2013 and only lost two conference matches out of the last 42.
Their dominance might fly under the radar but Columbia has consistently been ranked Top 20 nationally for the past five years. Tennis is also one of the strongest sports for the Ivy League on a national level with at least three Ivies being ranked in the Top 20 recruiting classes the past five years. Columbia ranks last in Ivy League championships but third in official NCAA championships .
The Lions could be a potential predator to jump the list in future years with several programs on the upswing. These universities have the largest student populations, the biggest budgets, and the most scholarships available. All of the major collegiate sports conferences (SEC, Big 10, Pacific-12, and ACC) are DI. Ivy League schools are also DI, but do not offer athletic scholarships due to a binding agreement among themselves. Each Ivy League college has its own unique accomplishments that make it important. All carry a certain reputation with them, and each school has programs that excel primarily in the medical and law fields, making them some of the most sought-after schools in the world.
Their admissions process is very selective, which helps the schools ensure that they only accept the best and brightest. Many famous people have graduated from Ivy League schools, including recent presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. This prestige leads many to believe that these colleges are only for the wealthy and elite. Often, companies look for Ivy League graduates as potential employees, usually preferred by law firms, medical facilities, and large corporations. It has long been coveted to have earned a degree from an Ivy League school.
Today, there are other competitors that some claim to be just as good as their Ivy counterparts. Some of these well-known schools include Duke University, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Vanderbilt, and Georgetown University, to name a few. The Ivy League schools are still excellent in both academia and in sports, and they have left a legacy of higher education with an exceptional track record and reputation to go along with them. Ivy Leagues do not offer athletic scholarships to their students. Students with strong athletic histories are more likely to gain admission to the schools, and once they do, they are eligible for financial aid equaling 100% of their demonstrated financial need.
Nonathletes with similar or slightly better academic credentials are less likely to be accepted into an Ivy League school than aspiring student athletes. The eight Ivy league schools offer an early admissions program, but five out of the eight have binding early decision programs that require students who apply early to commit to attend if they are accepted. The other three Ivy League schools have non-binding early action programs that allow students to apply to other colleges even if they are admitted early.
