The eight Ivy League schools are: Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) Columbia University (New York City) Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire) Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts) University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey) Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut) The Ivy League was established in 1954 as an athletic conference, so even though each of the eight schools has a long and distinguished history, the distinction doesn't necessarily have anything to do with academics.