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Big Three (colleges)

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The Big Three
Edward Penfield, College crews, 1908.jpg
Members rowing teams from ten colleges, including the Big Three in the top row
The Big Three is a historical term used in the United States to refer to Harvard
University, Yale University, and Princeton University. The phrase Big Three
originated in the 1880s, when these three colleges dominated college football.[1]
In 1906, these schools formed a sports compact that formalized a three-way football
competition which began in 1878. This early agreement predated the Ivy League by
exactly half a century. The rivalry remains intense today, though the three schools
are no longer national football powerhouses, and schools continue to refer to their
intercollegiate competitions as "Big Three" or "Harvard-Princeton-Yale" meets.

Contents
1 Historic status
2 Rankings
2.1 U.S. News & World Report
2.2 Peer schools
2.3 Order of the names
3 Economic diversity
4 As an athletic association
5 Big Four
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Historic status

Harvard-Princeton Football Game, 1915


In 1908, Scotsman Robert Knox Risk wrote the following about the state of American
universities during the early 20th century.

Princeton, like [Harvard and Yale], confers some social distinction upon its
graduates. In this respect Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are the Western
Counterparts of Oxford and Cambridge, and are maintained largely for the sons of
rich men. Members of the American aristocracy would send their boys to one or other
of these three universities if there were any aristocracy in the United States.[2]

Edward Digby Baltzell wrote: "The three major upper-class institutions in America
have been Harvard, Yale, and Princeton." These colleges have, in the past, been set
apart from others by a special historic connection with the White-Anglo-Saxon
Protestant (WASP) establishment. Of the three, Princeton University was
traditionally the preferred choice of the Southern upper class.[3] While describing
the recruiting process for The Rough Riders, Theodore Roosevelt, mentioned the Ivy
League schools including Harvard, Yale and Princeton as target schools.

We drew recruits from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and many another college; from
clubs like the Somerset, of Boston, and Knickerbocker, of New York; and from among
the men who belonged neither to club nor to college, but in whose veins the blood
stirred with the same impulse which once sent the Vikings over sea.[4]

The Saturday Review found in 1963 that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton enrolled 45% of
boys on the New York Social Register.[5] That year Nathaniel Burt described the
social prestige of the Big Three:

It is, above all, the national social prestige of the Big Three which is
competition with the purely local social prestige of the University [of
Pennsylvania]. Upper-class boys from all over the country, including Philadelphia,
go to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Only from Philadelphia do upper-class boys go
in any significant numbers to Penn. This is of course a universal national
phenomenon. The pattern of upper-class male college preference, as deduced from a
counting of noses in the various Social Registers, can be summed up as "The Big
Three and a Local Favorite."[6]

Burt continued, "Every city sends or has sent its Socially Registered sons to
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, in some preferred order, and to one local
institution. This order varies. New York sets the pattern with Yale first, Harvard
second, Princeton third, then Columbia. St. Louis and Baltimore are Princeton
towns. Most other cities (Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati) are Yale towns. Only
Boston, and occasionally Washington, are Harvard towns."

The connection between certain colleges and social ranking is old; Jerome Karabel,
in a note citing Kenneth Davis, says that "in the mid-eighteenth century, the
[president of Harvard] personally listed students when they enrolled, according
to ... 'to the Dignity of the Familie whereto the student severally belong'�a list
that was printed in the college catalogue and that determined precedence in such
matters as table seating, position in academic processionals, even recitations in
class."[7] Ronald Story, however, says that it was during �the four decades from
1815 to 1855� that �parents, in Henry Adams' words, began sending their children to
Harvard College for the sake of its social advantages.�[8]

A further intensification of the importance of the Big Three occurred during the
1920s; According to E. Digby Baltzell,[9] �in a � managerial society, the proper
college degree became the main criterion for potential elite status� it was during
the [1920s] that certain institutions of high prestige, such as Harvard, Yale and
Princeton (and Stanford on the West Coast) became all-important as upper-class-
ascribing institutions.� Not coincidentally, this was also the era when the Big
Three became concerned by �the Jewish problem� and began instituting interviews,
essays, and judgements of �character� into the admissions process.[10] From the
1930s on, Big Three admissions became progressively more meritocratic, but still
included non-academic factors such as �lineage.�

Ivy League schools including Harvard, Yale and Princeton have in the past been
regarded as the goals for many children in WASP circles. Some educators have
attempted to discourage this fixation. Jay Mathews, author of Harvard Schmarvard,
addresses seniors obsessed with Ivy League schools with the analysis: �It does not
matter where you go to school, it matters what you do when you get there and what
you do after you graduate.�

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