During my early years as Associate Director of Admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, I spent each fall traveling across the United States and abroad speaking with students and parents. I would leave my office in College Hall on the Penn campus  for up to two months, meeting high schoolers in their cafeterias at lunchtime

The Ivy League refers to eight private universities in the northeastern United States that originally joined together as an athletic conference in 1954. Over time, the term has come to symbolize academic prestige, selectivity, and global influence. The eight Ivy League schools are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University,