Strictly speaking, the Ivy League is an athletic organization founded in 1934, but it corresponds very closely with the much older concept of the Colonial Colleges (swapping Cornell for Rutgers and William and Mary).

As of of 1756, these colleges (by their modern names) { Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Columbia, Rutgers, Dartmouth, Princeton, Brown, and Pennsylvania } were the ONLY colleges that were chartered to grant degrees. There were no other degree granting institutions to compare with.