Penn State vs. The Ivy League: A Comparative Analysis

Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) is often mentioned alongside the Ivy League institutions. This article aims to provide a comprehensive comparison between Penn State and the Ivy League, exploring various aspects such as prestige, academics, campus life, and more.

What are the Ivy League Schools?

The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. These institutions are renowned for their academic excellence, rich history, and significant endowments. The eight members are:

Brown University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Harvard University
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University

Seven of these institutions were founded during the colonial period, making them some of the oldest colleges in the United States. Cornell University was founded immediately after the American Civil War.

Penn State: A Public Ivy

Pennsylvania State University is considered one of the "Public Ivies," a publicly funded institution that provides an education comparable to that of the elite Ivy League. Penn State is one of the largest universities in the US. It runs more than 275 undergraduate degree programs and postgraduate qualifications while conducting more than $1.44 billion worth of research annually. The majority of students are based on the main campus, University Park, located in the center of the state, but many students begin their studies on another campus before transferring to the main site. The university has the multi-location Penn State Dickinson Law, as well as the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

Prestige and Selectivity

The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) is an Ivy League institution and is highly selective, with an acceptance rate of around 6%. Penn State is a public university and is less selective, with an acceptance rate of around 50%. UPenn is generally considered more prestigious due to its Ivy League status and highly ranked programs.

Size and Location

Penn State has a larger student population, with over 40,000 undergraduate students, whereas UPenn has a smaller undergraduate population of around 10,500 students. UPenn is located in Philadelphia, a large urban area on the East Coast, while Penn State's main University Park campus is in State College, a smaller college town in central Pennsylvania. The atmosphere and accessibility to resources like internships, cultural experiences, and nightlife will vary greatly between the two locations.

Academic Strengths

Both universities have strong programs across various disciplines. UPenn is particularly known for its undergraduate business school (Wharton), as well as strong programs in nursing, engineering, and the social sciences. Penn State is well-respected for its engineering, business, and agricultural programs.

Campus Experience

UPenn has a compact, urban campus in the heart of Philadelphia, while Penn State's University Park campus spans a large area in a more rural setting with extensive green spaces and a traditional college town ambiance. Students' living experiences, extracurricular activities, and overall campus culture will differ based on these factors.

Athletics

Penn State is known for its competitive Big Ten athletic teams, especially football, and has a very active and enthusiastic student fan base. UPenn competes in the Division I Ivy League, which is less sports-oriented compared to the Big Ten.

Historical Context and Traditions

Ivy League Origins

The term "Ivy League" first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor on February 7, 1935. Several sportswriters and other journalists used the term shortly later to refer to the older colleges, those along the northeastern seaboard of the United States, chiefly the nine institutions with origins dating from the colonial era, together with the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Naval Academy, and a few others. These schools were known for their long-standing traditions in intercollegiate athletics, often being the first schools to participate in such activities. A common folk etymology attributes the name to the Roman numeral for four (IV), asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members.

Early Athletic Competition

The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, on August 3, 1852. Harvard's team, "The Oneida", won the race and was presented with trophy black walnut oars from then-presidential nominee General Franklin Pierce. The proposal to create an athletic league did not succeed. In 1870, the nation's first formal athletic league was created in 1870 with the formation of the Rowing Association of American Colleges (RAAC), composed exclusively of Ivy League universities. The first Harvard vs Yale rugby football contest was held in 1875, two years after the inaugural Princeton-Yale rugby football contest. In 1895, Cornell, Columbia, and Penn founded the Intercollegiate Rowing Association, which remains the oldest collegiate athletic organizing body in the US.

Formal Establishment of the Ivy League

In 1945, the presidents of the eight schools signed the first Ivy Group Agreement, which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for the football teams. The principles established reiterated those put forward in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton presidents' Agreement of 1916. The members of the Group reaffirm their prohibition of athletic scholarships. In 1954, the presidents extended the Ivy Group Agreement to all intercollegiate sports, effective with the 1955-56 basketball season. This is generally reckoned as the formal formation of the Ivy League. As part of the transition, Brown, the only Ivy that had not joined the EIBL, did so for the 1954-55 season. A year later, the Ivy League absorbed the EIBL. The Ivy League claims the EIBL's history as its own.

Diversity and Inclusion

Ivy League institutions have a complex history of racial segregation and eventual integration. All universities in the Ivy League besides Cornell University were chartered during the American era of slavery. In 2003, Brown University was the first of the Ivies to take accountability for their historic ties to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Following Brown, other Ivy League universities formed committees to examine their ties to slavery and found various institutional relationships to slavery.

Early Black student admits to Ivy League universities were controversial and often faced backlash. Dartmouth initially denied its first Black graduate, Edward Mitchell, supposedly to avoid "offend[ing] students." Harvard admitted its first Black student, Beverly Garnett Williams, in 1847. News of his admission incited protests by Harvard students and faculty. Williams died before the academic year began, however, and never matriculated. Richard Theodore Greener was the first African American to receive a Harvard degree in 1870. Cornell seemed the most inclusive of the Ivy Leagues at its inception, with admission open to any race and gender.

Following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the Ivy League Conference committed itself to uphold "diversity, equity, and inclusion," to combat racism and homophobia.

Read also: Penn State Admission: Average ACT

Political Stereotypes vs. Reality

Colloquial knowledge would have one believe that the eight Ivy League schools span the political spectrum. Dartmouth, with its preponderance of Greek life, and Princeton, with its old-guard eating clubs, supposedly fall on the right hand side of the political divide, followed by the staunchly pre-professional Cornell and Penn sitting slightly to the left while still remaining bastions of conservatism. Harvard sits in the center, attempting to please everyone by declining to condescend to either side. Yale and Columbia represent a slightly more liberal and activist element of that same Harvard brand of centrism, and Brown supposedly sits proudly and squarely on the left, with its open curriculum and counter-cultural legacy. But are these stereotypes true? The truth, it would appear, is as complicated as the stereotypes are reductive.

Whether the political leanings of a university are the product of the faculty and staff’s beliefs, or the students’, is up for debate. Certain news outlets have taken such data, which consistently finds that Ivy League faculty are left-leaning, and ran with the conclusion that Ivy League schools fail to foster learning environments where a diversity of viewpoints can be expressed.

Campus culture and political leanings are two separate things. For prospective applicants seeking to gauge the political culture of any of the campuses they are interested in, the surveys are a good place to start, but the testimony of current students is the best data on the market.

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