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Encyclopedia > Big Three (universities)

The Big Three is an historical term used in the United States to refer to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. The phrase Big Three originated in the 1880s, when these three colleges dominated college football[1]. High schools' college admissions counselors and colleges' admissions guides sometimes use the initialism HYP to refer to these universities. In the early 1900s, these schools formed a sports compact which predates the Ivy League. And they continue to refer to their intercollegiate rivalries as a 'Big Three' or 'Harvard-Yale-Princeton' meet. Harvard University campus (old map) Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Yale redirects here. ... Princeton University is a coeducational private university located on an extensive campus in and around suburban Princeton, New Jersey. ...


In the United States these universities have a special, iconic status which is related to, but separate from their stellar academic reputations. This special status is rooted in their connection to the WASP establishment (§1 below). If only current academic reputation were considered, these three schools would still be outstanding, but it is controversial whether or not academic characteristics alone would justify putting these particular schools into a special category of their own (§2 below) Suborder Symphyta Apocrita See text for families. ...

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Historic status of the Big Three

These universities have historically been set apart from all others by a combination of academic factors and a special historic connection with the WASP establishment; as E. Digby Baltzell (a WASP himself and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania) writes, "the three major upper-class institutions in America have been Harvard, Yale, and Princeton." Baltzell also goes on to write that "Throughout the thirties and well into the forties, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, were still staffed almost entirely by old-stock Protestants."[2] Suborder Symphyta Apocrita See text for families. ... E. Digby Baltzell E. Digby Baltzell (Edward Digby Baltzell) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1915 to a wealthy, Episcopalian family. ... Suborder Symphyta Apocrita See text for families. ... The University of Pennsylvania (Penn is the moniker used by the university itself [2]) is a private, nonsectarian research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ...


In any case, academic factors alone do not explain the separation of these three universities from close academic rivals, nor do they explain why they are almost invariably named in the order "Harvard, Yale and Princeton." Quotations naming them in this order abound: "The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton;"[3], "St. Gaudens... was... the bearer of honorary degrees from the universities of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton;"[4], "Fewer scions of socially prominent families are taking the traditional academic road to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton."[5]


Theodore Roosevelt names the Big Three in their canonical order and puts them into social context:

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. (Theodore Roosevelt, 1899) [6]

Burt (1963) 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."[7]

Burt goes on to note "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 dertermined precedence in such matters as table seating, position in acadmeic processionals, even recitations in class."[8]. Ronald Story, however, says that it was during "the four decades from 1815 to 1855" that "parents, in Henry Adams's words, began 'sending their children to Harvard College for the sake of its social advantages.'"[9].


A further intensification of the importance of the Big Three occurred during the 1920s; According to E. Digby Baltzell[10], "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[11]. From the 1930s on, Big Three admissions became progressively more meritocractic, but still include non-academic factors such as "lineage."


Current academic quality of the Big Three

Rankings such as those of U.S. News and World Report rate these three schools as being among the most selective and having the highest academic admissions standards for undergraduate education among US colleges. For example, the 2006 rankings[12] ranked Harvard and Princeton tied for first and Yale placing third. But U. S. News rankings fluctuate from year to year. Other U.S. universities, such as Stanford, Duke, MIT, Penn, Caltech and Dartmouth often making appearances at either the top of the U.S. News and other academic rankings. For example the year 2000, the three top-ranked universities were Caltech, Harvard, and MIT, in that order [13]. Notwithstanding, Harvard, Yale and Princeton have an aura which is difficult for other institutions to match. The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University (or simply Stanford), is a private university located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco in an [1] of Santa Clara County. ... Duke University is a private, coeducational, research university located in Durham, North Carolina, USA. Officially founded as Duke University in 1924, Duke traces its institutional roots back to 1838. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a private research university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is one of the worlds leading research institutions in science and technology. ... The University of Pennsylvania (Penn is the moniker used by the university itself [2]) is a private, nonsectarian research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ... The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech) is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. ... Dartmouth College is a private academic institution in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States. ...


HYP universities are widely, and some say damagingly (see Levine, quoted by Coeyman), regarded as being the goal for children to fix upon. Some educators have attempted to discourage this fixation. Jay Mathews, author of Harvard Schmarvard, addresses seniors obsessed with HYP, and similar prestigious institutions, 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." But a letter to the New York Times in 2000 commented:

[The Times reported that] "the colleges say... winning admission to a top college does not determine life success." This seems somewhat paradoxical in a year marked by a presidential election with candidates representing Harvard, Yale and Princeton (George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Al Gore, Joseph I. Lieberman, Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke). Perhaps Ivy League admission matters only if you want to be leader of the free world.[14]

Ranking debates

Main article: college and university rankings

The actual academic quality of the three HYP universities is a qualitative judgment and a matter of some debate and disputed. However, based on the selectivity of admissions, Yale had the lowest acceptance rate (9.9%) among major world universities in 2004, with Harvard (10.3%) and Princeton (11.8%) coming in second and third. In 2006, Yale continued to be the most selective university, with an acceptance rate of 8.6%. In higher education, college and university rankings are listings of educational institutions in an order determined by any combination of factors. ...


The 2005 U.S. News & World Report "National University" rankings placed the HYP universities in the top three spots, with Harvard and Princeton in joint first place and Yale coming in third [2]. But the U.S. News ranking methodology may simply be reflecting, rather than independently confirming, the reputation of the Big Three: the New York Times reports that "when asked how he knew his system was sound, Mel Elfin, the rankings' founder, often answered that he knew it because those three schools always landed on top."[15]. U.S. News & World Report is a weekly newsmagazine. ...


U.S. News' rankings favor small elite private universities with a low admission rate, small class size and high rates of alumni giving, and disfavor larger institutions, which may reject as many or more applicants, but have a higher admissions rate, larger class sizes and have lower alumni giving rates. It further disfavors schools with a strong math and science curriculum and public schools both of which tend to have a lower short-term graduation rate.


For example, HYP's Ivy League bretheren Cornell is a relatively large school and it has the highest acceptance rate (21%) of any Ivy League school. But it also has strong engineering departments, and in those arenas, it is usually rated higher than either Princeton or Yale and some college ratings reflect this fact. This is about the university. ...


The 2004 Times Higher Education Supplement World University Rankings placed Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in first (tied), eighth, and ninth place, respectively, out of all the universities around the globe. However, a number of other US universities ranked in the top 10 in the Times world-wide ranking and ahead of both Yale and Princeton, notably Cal-Berkeley, first (tied), MIT, third, Caltech, fourth, and Stanford, seventh. The Times Higher Education Supplement, known as The Times Higher for short, is a newspaper based in London, United Kingdom, that reports specifically on issues related to education. ... The University of California, Berkeley (also known as the University of California at Berkeley, UC Berkeley, Cal, California, or Berkeley) is the oldest and flagship campus of the ten-campus University of California system. ... Mapúa Institute of Technology (MIT, MapúaTech or simply Mapúa) is a private, non-sectarian, Filipino tertiary institute located in Intramuros, Manila. ... California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (commonly known as Caltech) is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. ... Stanford may refer: Stanford University Places: Stanford, Kentucky Stanford, California, home of Stanford University Stanford Shopping Center Stanford, New York, town in Dutchess County. ...


Harvard, Yale, and Princeton hold the top three spots (in that order) in terms of largest numbers of Rhodes Scholarships awarded. Rhodes House in Oxford Rhodes Scholarships were created by Cecil John Rhodes. ...


The September 2002 issue of Worth magazine ranked high schools on the basis of the number of students from those high schools matriculating at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Worth magazine argued that the three schools were "three of the most selective Ivy colleges; the term HYP has come to signify the elite college standard." 2002 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December A timeline of events in the news for September, 2002. ... Worth is a personal finance and luxury lifestyle magazine in the United States. ... High school - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... The matriculation ceremony at Oxford Matriculation refers to the formal process of entering a university, or of becoming eligible to enter by acquiring the required prior qualifications. ...


Current Lack of Economic Diversity

Over the past half-century, the 'Big Three', and the rest of the Ivy League, have increasingly stressed both diversity and academic merit in their admissions process, and in part have freed themselves from some of their WASP roots. Notwithstanding, their students, on the whole, lack in economic diversity. As Jerome Karabel, a Harvard graduate and the author of the Chosen Few, detailing the history of the admissions process at HYP, noted:

The Big Three are notoriously lacking one of [diversity's] most critical dimensions: class diversity. In a study of the percentage of low-income students in 2000 (as measured by the proportion of federal Pell Grants - need-based awards that do not have to be repaid and make up the bulk of many poorer students' aid) at the nation's leading universities, the Big Three were found to be among the nation's least economically diverse schools. Of the 40 universities studied, Harvard and Princeton ranked 39th and 38th respectively, with Yale at 25th. While the three top universities in economic diversity were all public institutions (the University of California at Los Angeles, UC-Berkeley, and UC-San Diego), the next two - the University of Southern California and New York University - were private. And one university in the top 10, California Institute of Technology, is among the most selective private institutions in the nation."[3]

Shorthand Acronyms

Although any number of impromptu variations are seen in online forums (e.g. HYPS for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford University the only common shorthand is: The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University (or simply Stanford), is a private university located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco in an [1] of Santa Clara County. ...

  • HYP — Harvard, Yale, and Princeton

Order of the names

The three universities, when named together, are almost invariably named in the order Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. This could reflect their relative age—their founding dates being 1636, 1701, and 1746, respectively[16]—which in turn is an important point of institutional pride, since it governs the order in which the institutions march in academic processions. Academic procession on the occasion of the conferment of doctoral degrees at the University of Lund in southern Sweden (1990). ...


Harvard is also the largest of the three by most measures, Yale second, and Princeton third, and other characteristics related to size have the same rank order.


It has also been suggested that the name ordering is related to a famous school rivalry between Harvard and Yale, although a more prosaic explanation is simply that the original 1880s journalistic initialism was coined that way because this ordering is one that actually results in an initialism that is also an acronym, HYP, and it simply stuck. Pairs of schools, especially when they are close to each other either geographically or in their areas of specialization, establish a school rivalry with each other over the years. ... Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial letter or letters of words, such as NATO and XHTML, and are pronounced in a way that is distinct from the full pronunciation of what the letters stand for. ...


The Big Three as an athletic association

Harvard-Yale-Princeton (variously HYP, H-Y-P, H/Y/P, the Big Three, or the Ancient Three) is an athletic association involving Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. The athletic agreements among the three universities were first formalized in 1906, although their football teams had been engaging in three-way competitions, which newspapers had been referring to as "HYP", since at least the 1880s. The Big Three made further formal agreements in 1916 and 1923, and although in part they have now been superseded by the Ivy League, formed in 1945, the three universities still sponsor events that involve only themselves. Harvard University campus (old map) Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Yale redirects here. ... Princeton University is a coeducational private university located on an extensive campus in and around suburban Princeton, New Jersey. ... 1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... United States simply as football, is a competitive team sport that is both fast-paced and strategic. ... // Events and Trends Technology Development and commercial production of electric lighting Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings. ... 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1923 (MCMXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Ivy League consists of eight private institutions of higher education located in the northeastern United States. ... 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1945 calendar). ...


The first Big Three agreement in 1906 was the result of a conference on football called by President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt in October 1905 as a result of deteriorating relations, particularly the exclusion of Princeton by Harvard and Yale, and increasing violence of play. The agreement of June 1916, the Triple Agreement, was originally proposed by President Woodrow Wilson in December 1909 out of a desire to reduce injuries, and took several years to come to fruition, resulting in common eligibility requirements. The Three Presidents' Agreement agreement of January 1923 covered financial arrangements, scouting, and scholarships, amongst other things. In 1926 there was a disagreement between Harvard and Princeton, that caused a hiatus in the Big Three that lasted for 8 years. The presidential seal was used by President Hayes in 1880 and last modified in 1959 by adding the 50th star for Hawaii. ... Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. ... 1905 (MCMV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States (1913–1921). ...


References

  1. ^ Synnott, Marsha G. The “Big Three” and the Harvard-Princeton Football Break, 1926-1934; see also Harvard-Yale-Princeton.
  2. ^ Baltzell, E. Digby (1996). Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia. Transaction Publishers. 156000830X. (p. 249, "the three major upper-class institutions...")
  3. ^ Archer, William, America Today, Observations and Reflections America Today, available for free via Project Gutenberg, Letter VI
  4. ^ Cox, Kenyon (1914), Artist and Public and Other Essay on Art Subjects {{{name}}}, available for free via Project Gutenberg
  5. ^ Trumbull, Robert (1964), "Gifted Displacing Rich at Ivy 'Big 3'", The New York Times, March 14, 1964, p. 25
  6. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1899) The Rough Riders, The Rough Riders, available for free via Project Gutenberg
  7. ^ Burt, Nathaniel [1963] (1999). The Perennial Philadelphians: The Anatomy of an American Aristocracy. University of Pennsylvania Press. 0812216938. (p. 86, "...the Big Three and a Local Favorite...")
  8. ^ Karabel, Jerome (2005). The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Houghton Mifflin. 0818574581. (p. 562, note 19, citing Kenneth Davis, FDR, p. 135, re the Harvard president's list)
  9. ^ Story, Ronald (1980), The Forging of an Aristocracy: Harvard and the Boston Upper Class, 1800-1870, Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0819550442 (p. 97, (1815-1855 as the era when Harvard began to be perceived as socially advantageous)
  10. ^ Baltzell, E. Digby (1964). The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. Yale University Press. 0300038186. (p. 209, "...proper college degree became the main criterion...")
  11. ^ Karabel, op. cit, Part I, The Origins of Selective Admissions, 1900-1933
  12. ^ America's Best Colleges 2006, U.S. News and World Report
  13. ^ [1]
  14. ^ Gordan, Israel (2000): "Applying to College, Made Easy;" The New York Times, December 10, 2000, Editorial Desk, p. 14
  15. ^ Thompson, Nicholas (2003): "The Best, The Top, The Most;" The New York Times, August 3, 2003, Education Life Supplement, p. 24
  16. ^ All facts in this section from the Wikipedia articles Harvard, Yale, and Princeton unless otherwise noted

Harvard-Yale-Princeton (variously HYP, H-Y-P, H/Y/P, the Big Three, or the Ancient Three) is an athletic association involving Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. ... Project Gutenberg (often abbreviated as PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works. ... Project Gutenberg (often abbreviated as PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works. ... Project Gutenberg (often abbreviated as PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works. ... Harvard University campus (old map) Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Yale redirects here. ... Princeton University is a coeducational private university located on an extensive campus in and around suburban Princeton, New Jersey. ... Categories: Stub | English-language newspapers | South Korean newspapers ... June 6 is the 157th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (158th in leap years), with 208 days remaining. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) is an international newspaper published daily, Monday through Friday. ... June 7 is the 158th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (159th in leap years), with 207 days remaining. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... June 7 is the 158th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (159th in leap years), with 207 days remaining. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... June 6 is the 157th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (158th in leap years), with 208 days remaining. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

Oxbridge is a portmanteau name for the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the two oldest in the United Kingdom and the English-speaking universe. ... The Ivy League consists of eight private institutions of higher education located in the northeastern United States. ... Little Ivies is a colloquialism to refer to a group of small, selective American colleges and an American university; however, it does not denote any official organization. ... The Seven Sisters are a historic group of American womens colleges. ... Wren Building (College of William and Mary) Alumni Hall (Miami U) Sather Gate (UC Berkeley) Central Campus Diag (U of Michigan) Old Well (UNC-Chapel Hill) UT Tower (U of Texas) Williams Hall (U of Vermont) The Rotunda (U of Virginia) Public Ivy is a colloquialism for a state-funded... Boston College The Jesuit Ivy is a nickname given to Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. ... Southern Ivies is a colloquialism used to imply a Southern college or university is comparable to the schools of the Ivy League in some way, usually in academic quality or in social prestige. ... Boat Race Logo Exhausted crews at the finish of the 2002 Boat Race The Boat Race is a rowing race between the rowing clubs of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. ...

External links

Some sample news coverage of HYP athletic competitions:

 
 

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