Ivy League
The eight private research universities of the Ivy League — America’s oldest, most selective institutions.
Category A
The eight Ivies
| Harvard University | Cambridge, MA |
| Yale University | New Haven, CT |
| Princeton University | Princeton, NJ |
| Columbia University | New York, NY |
| University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia, PA |
| Brown University | Providence, RI |
| Dartmouth College | Hanover, NH |
| Cornell University | Ithaca, NY |
Category B
Leading public universities
| UC Berkeley | Berkeley, CA |
| UCLA | Los Angeles, CA |
| University of Michigan | Ann Arbor, MI |
| University of Virginia | Charlottesville, VA |
| UNC Chapel Hill | Chapel Hill, NC |
| University of Florida | Gainesville, FL |
| University of Texas at Austin | Austin, TX |
| University of Wisconsin–Madison | Madison, WI |
Category C
Science & technology
| MIT | Cambridge, MA |
| California Institute of Technology | Pasadena, CA |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA |
| Carnegie Mellon University | Pittsburgh, PA |
| Stanford University | Stanford, CA |
| University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | Urbana, IL |
| Purdue University | West Lafayette, IN |
| Texas A&M University | College Station, TX |
Category D
Top liberal arts colleges
| Williams College | Williamstown, MA |
| Amherst College | Amherst, MA |
| Swarthmore College | Swarthmore, PA |
| Pomona College | Claremont, CA |
| Wellesley College | Wellesley, MA |
| Bowdoin College | Brunswick, ME |
| Carleton College | Northfield, MN |
| Claremont McKenna College | Claremont, CA |
How to use this list: categories aren’t rankings — within each group, schools are listed alphabetically. For application, check each university’s official site for deadlines, standardized-test policy, and international-student requirements. Enrollment, tuition and program details change every year.