Talk:Big Three (universities)

For a June 2005 deletion debate over this page see Votes for deletion/College admissions and ranking shorthands in the United States

Other permutations of the acronym
For the record I am not making this shit up. - lotsofissues

There aren't enough mentions of those other acronyms to warrant the mention of them. There are 14,000 mention in Google of "HYP" involving Harvard but less than 800 of "HYPS" and many of those that were there seemed to actually be "HYP" mention but of athletic meets of HYP, called "HYPs" and only referring to H/Y/P. The other acronyms are also dissimilar in this fashion - there are not athletic meets involving HYPS or HYPSM, etc. HYP isn't just a coined acronym, these are real events and have been for some time. Uris 08:23, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * HYP is far more common than YHP or HYPS, by two orders of magnitude. See the following Google results:


 * " " - 24000
 * " " - 667
 * " " - 886
 * " " - 657


 * Incidentally,


 * " " - 501,000, but, as can be seen from the first list of ten results, the vast majority of these are using "phy" as an appreviation (often a course name abbreviation) for the word "physics"


 * &mdash;Lowellian (talk) 06:03, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * Apparently someone has created an article at HYPSM, claiming that "a google search on HYPSM will verify that this is a commonly used abbreviation". Google search:


 * " " - 224, but includes links like and
 * " " - 144


 * Hardly seems notable to me. –MementoVivere 08:16, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Within a small group of discussion I participate in - it is very notable. Please don't use Google as an the supreme editorial control mechanism.  If a reliable contributer claims to be submitting useful content but that content is limited to a small group and may fall under the scope of Google - then believe him.  Don't drag it into an already hopelessly cluttered delete page and piss off everyone. Lotsofissues 05:12, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Note on the history of this page
The page HYP (universities) was listed on Votes for deletion in December 2004; see Votes for deletion/HYP (universities). The page was deleted. On February 1, 2005, Uris recreated this page at the location HYP (Harvard-Yale-Princeton), using similar text to the old article. When I (Lowellian) noticed this in March 2005, I wondered what should be done with the old deleted page history. Angela merged the page histories of the old deleted page with the new page. &mdash;Lowellian (talk) 22:50, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

move/rename
What would people think about moving this page to HYP and moving what's there now to HYP (disambiguation)? I asked the same question on Talk:HYP; please direct your answer there so that we can avoid having two conversations. Remes 06:05, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I would have no objection to the move. &mdash;Lowellian (talk) 04:44, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

HYPSOMETRY removed
A clever hoax addition, but usage does not exist. Not even at the citadels of obsessive UG admissions discussions (xoxohth, College Confidential.

lots of issues | leave me a message 01:48, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

HYPC
Lotsofissues has removed HYPC, stating that "I can't find a single instance of use, likely attempt by Columbia student to associate school's name with big 3". I've searched, and I cannot find anything, either. Lotsofissues' hypothesis is corroborated by the fact that both of the IP addresses who have added this purported initialism, and, are in the 160.39.0.0/16 netblock that is assigned to Columbia University. Uncle G 01:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Dead link removed
Dpbsmith (talk) 19:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Merge proposal with Harvard-Yale-Princeton
See discussion on Talk:Harvard-Yale-Princeton. --└Smith120bh/TALK┐ 02:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Keeping the less and more controversial topics separate
I'd like to try to keep a clear distinction between the issue of that these three schools having, special status of some kind, based on historical connection to the WASP establishment, which is as close to being an objective fact as any such thing can be, from the endlessly contentious question of whether, in the year 2006, that status is deserved or justified. I'd also like to avoid blurring the realities of what words like "prestigious," "elite," and "selective" actually mean.

This is made difficult because college guides, etc. tend to blur them and use them in a euphemistic way. U. S. News is not going to come right out and say "We don't really care about the percentage of alumnis who give as such, or the percentage of applicants admitted as such, we just use these as markers for what we really do care about. What we do care about is whatever it is that Harvard and Williams have, that MIT and Berkeley do not have, that would explain why alumni of the latter institutions have never occupied the White House."

It is also made difficult because the influence of the WASP establishment a) has almost certainly declined since the Vietnam war, but b) almost certainly still exists. If so, a case can be made for non-academic "specialness" of these three schools being less important than it was.

However, I flat out disagree with someone who made the comment on the MIT talk page that "the meme is now 'Harvard, MIT, and Stanford'" and I did a number of web and database searches that seem to bear me out. As of 2006 the Big Three are still the Big Three, whether or not they can be said to deserve it. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Page Needs Serious Editing and Reorganization
This article is too long and convoluted. It is also preachy and self-absorbed.

First off, the origins of the name 'Big Three' and also Harvard-Yale-Princeton, all come from the Athletic field and, I believe, this fact should be mentioned first and foremost. If you do a Google search, most of the references, outside of reviews of the book, "the Chosen" are all to Athletics. This is the most common usage.

Second, the use of the 'Big Three' and 'Harvard-Yale-Princeton' has aquired secondary meaning beyond the athletic field, but it is is not widely known and, at least for 'Big Three,' ambiguous. Again, apart from "The Chosen," a google search will turn up Duke, NC and NC State as often as HYP. It only becomes clear in context when either HYP or the Ivy League is mentioned (or implied) that the 'Big Three' refers to 'Harvard-Yale-Princeton'.

Third, I'm a West Coast boy (w/3years of graduate work in the Ivy League). Our view out here is it is pretty much Harvard, then the rest of the Ivy League, with Yale, Columbia, Penn and Princeton being the best of the rest. But apart from their status of being Second Violins, Yale and Princeton have no special, iconic status apart from being in the Ivy League. And yes, these schools do have a connection to the upper crust of Northeasten society (i.e., WASPs), but these schools have evolved so that they are no longer finishing schools, they are first rate academic institutions. (If they had not evolved they would now be second rate institutions). There is no way that George W. Bush would be admitted to Yale today.

Why the HYP? (pun intended). What sets these schools apart from other schools such as Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Duke, UChicago, Cornell, Columbia, Michigan, UC, etc, is the combination of the following factors: Private, Ultra Selective, Ivy League, General Liberal Arts and Science Education, Longevity and the Institution's history and tradition. Other schools come close, such as Stanford, which lacks the Longevity and the Ivy League, and MIT which is non-Ivy League and more specialized in the sciences. The gist should be that Harvard Yale and Princeton are the 'Big Three' of the Ivy League based on their historic athletic connection, and now, the terms 'HYP' and 'Big Three' have evolved as pseudonyms for ultra-selective admissions policies.

Fourth, let's not spend any time speculating on the conical order of their names, what is, is.


 * Something should be said. IMHO the most likely reason by far is the one given in the first paragraph--age and hence order in academic processions. The third paragraph isn't sourced ("It has been also been suggested..."), and I don't believe it... so I've tagged it and will remove it eventually if nobody can source it. The second paragraph is factual, but I agree that it's skating on thin ice. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:28, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe the typical order is based on a multitude of factors, including academic procession. But most writers don't think that way. Harvard is the big fish, Yale its rival, and Princeton the afterthought. Not only does Harvard have the top-rated undergrad program, but its Grad and Professional programs (which are bigger than its undergrad programs) are extensive and all first rate.  Although Yale's law school might have a slight edge, most everything else on the grad level is at least a step behind.  Princeton's grad programs are much smaller and it has no professional schools.


 * ''Remember to that it was Harvard and Yale that first began competeing against each other, first in rowing and then in football. The Harvard-Yale football game is "The Game" whereas, when Princeton competes, it is either Harvard v. Princeton, or Princeton v. Yale


 * There is also a bit of lyricism. The combination of "Harvard Yale Princeton" sounds pretty good, but "Yale Harvard Princeton" is more of a mouthful.


 * Of course, there is also the historic reference to HYP and also all the HYP clubs out there, both of which also skew people's minds.


 * It is like the Yankees and the Mets. Google '"Yankee Mets"' gets many more hits than '"Mets Yankees"'.  If you Google '"Harvard Yale Princeton" -club' you get 48,000 hits, and '"Harvard Princeton Yale" -club' gets 14,000, and no other combination even gets a 1,000, although Harvard in second place gets roughly twice the amount as Harvard in third ("club" is excluded from the search to avoid the HYP clubs which skew the data).  What this data shows is the unconsious working of the writers minds: they think Harvard first.


 * However, the trouble with exploring all of the reasons why the order is that the order is ancillary to the article. The best answer would be to shorten this section to read something like: "The Big Three are most often referred to in the following order: Harvard, Yale and Princeton.  (Citations: Roosevelt, HYP clubs, Williams, etc.) This related to a number of factors including their founding dates and places in the academic procession, the size of the universities, and the historic rivalry between Harvard and Yale ....  Agreed? Swlenz 5 April 2006.

Fifth, the dissertation on the 'Big Three's' historic connections to the Northeastern Upper Class should be placed in a separate article and expanded to include all of the Ivy League and the Little Three, all of which historically enjoyed the same connections. The historic WASP connection of the Big Three should not be the main focus of this article, it is not separate and distinct from the WASP connection to other universities in the Northeast. Swlenz 3/31/06


 * Don't agree. Harvard, Yale and Princeton are pretty sharply distinct from the rest of the Ivy League. I'm not sure whether this should be one article or two, but Harvard, Yale and Princeton are not just "Ivy League" schools in the public mind. Although I do take your point that Amherst/Wesleyan/Williams do have a similar connection and historically were, in fact, somewhat comparable to the Big Three at one time. It was somewhere in the 1800-1850 period that Harvard exploded into a different kind of institution in a different category.


 * But, Teddy Roosevelt wasn't talking about his Rough Riders being from Brown or Cornell. Or Williams. Burt says that (in the first part of the twentieth century) "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.'"


 * And they are not merely the Big Three of the Ivy League. You are going to get the same answer if you ask "what are the three most-desired schools in the Ivy League" than if you ask "what are the three most-desired schools in the U. S." And you'll get that answer regardless of whatever this year's U. S. News stats might happen to be. It's not as if the answer to the first question were "Harvard, Yale and Princeton" but the answer to the second were "Harvard, Duke and Stanford." And the answer is not "Yale, Harvard and Princeton" even though I believe Yale's acceptance percentage is lower than Harvard's. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:06, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * In any case, the "Ivy League" was not created until 1950 so the special status of Harvard, Yale and Princeton is not related to the Ivy League as such. My personal impression, but am not sure and cannot find a verifiable source, is that the phrase "Ivy League" is frequently said when it is Harvard, Yale, and Princeton that are really meant. The Ivy League aura is extended to the others almost by courtesy. That is, unless you've been looking at college admissions guides lately, or have some connection, geographical or other with the school, when you say "Ivy League" it is not Cornell that come to mind. I suspect that if you asked a Midwesterner "is Columbia a member of the Ivy League" there would be a brief pause for thought; there would be no such pause if you asked the question about Yale, or if you asked whether Michigan is a member of the Big Ten. Certainly the phrase "the Ancient Eight" is a courtesy expansion of the term "Ancient Three;" the "Ancient Three" really are ancient&mdash;by U.S. standards; the "Ancient Eight" are not. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:28, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Couple of thoughts. My own reference is yes, Harvard, Yale and Princeton are distinct, but not sharply so, from the remainder of the Ivy League.  The name the "Ivy League" has been around a lot longer than the athletic conference.  All of the Ivy League, with the exception of upstart Cornell, predate the revolutionary war, and Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Penn and Dartmouth were all founded pretty much at the same time. Ancient 3 or 8, both apply equally.


 * I was talking to a buddy of mine a couple of years ago. He had gone to Harvard, but his family had gone to Yale. I think I compared going to Yale to finishing second in the Siena horse race. To my surprize, he piped up and said his mother was in the Admissions department at Harvard, and then said embarrassingly, that of the student admitted to both Harvard and Yale, Harvard had a draw of two or three to one over Yale.


 * Admissions selectivity, in of itself, is not a great measure of a school. There are a number of variables such as the number of applicants, the number of spots available, and the percentage of admits that matriculate that all come into play. It is also possible for the admissions department to 'game' the system to get better numbers.  There is a study out there that said Princeton does exactly that in order to improve its selectivity ratio, that it actually avoids some students that it thinks would be admitted to Harvard, Yale or Stanford.  The study was on draws between schools. It turned out that there was a pretty clear order at the top: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT, then Princeton, then a gap down to the rest.


 * The connection between the Big Three and WASP establishment needs to be tighten down. Most of the references are good. (An exception, the Roosevelt quote only offers circumstantial support for HYP as a WASP institution -- however, it can be tied to the typical naming order). Still, it could read better. I also would avoid using the term "special status" because it is presumptive.


 * I read Roosevelt's words in a way which I think is perfectly obvious, but which I agree is not explicitly stated. Men's clubs were a prime indicator of social status at the time. First, he names the high-status colleges in canonical order. Then he names some high-status clubs, probably the top three clubs but I wouldn't know. Then he draws a contrast between them and "the men who belonged neither to club nor to college." I also think that "blue blood" is the implicit contrast with the blood that stirs with Viking impulses. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


 * A more readable approach might be to follow Karabel's lead and talk about the evolution of the HYP from clubby WASP institutions to their present form.Swlenz 4/5/06


 * It is funny to me to come here and see criticism of the article. I was coming to say that I think it is very well written. U$er

Statistical comparison...
I've been brooding myself about what to do with this section. Btm removed it. I was strongly tempted to do so myself. But I think it needs discussion. The material removed is appended below.

Now, my first reaction to it is that it is Stanford boosterism. (Members of universities such as MIT, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, etc. often resent the status of "Harvard, Yale, and Princeton," which, from certain points of view, appears to beundeserved Undeserved it may well be, but they have this special status whether deserved or not. I've seen editors of the MIT article insist that the meme is no longer "Harvard, Yale and Princeton" but "Harvard, MIT and Stanford," editors of the Penn article insist that the meme is "Big Four," including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn, and so forth. But they have not produced convincing source citations attesting to such assertions).

There are also problems with the statistics themselves. For example, it seems utterly inappropriate to include statistics on Supreme Court clerks and law firm hires when not all the institutions being compared have law schools. Also, given the numbers of undergrads, graduate students, and faculty of the four institutions--


 * Undergraduate 6655, 5300, 4635, 6654
 * Graduate 13000, 6100, 1975, 11421
 * Faculty 2300, 2300, 1103, 1750

it would seem that many of the statistics reflect nothing more than the relative size of the institutions.

On the whole, I agree with Btm that this simply doesn't belong, and I'm also going to edit the section on "order of the names" to mention only founding date and relative size. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Statistical Comparison of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford
Harvard	Yale	Princeton	Stanford

RESOURCES

1	Endowment 2004 ($billion)	22.6	12.7	9.9	9.9

2	Library (million volumes)	15.4	11.7	6.2	8.2

AWARDS AND HONORS

3	Nobel Prize winners	75	19	29	37

4	Current Faculty in National Academy of Sciences	164	62	70	124

5	Current Faculty in National Academy of Engineering	14	5	20	87

6	Current Faculty in Institute of Medicine	101	37	8	81

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

7	2005 National Merit Scholars	287	194	180	232

8	2005 National Achievement Scholars	70	57	40	51

9	Rhodes Scholars	315	166	126	84

10	Marshall Scholars	239	112	101	74

11	Putnam Math Competition First Place Finish	25	0	0	0

12	Putnam Math Competition Top Five Finish	51	11	24	5

13	2003 College Class Enrolling in Top Graduate Schools 	358	231	174	181

ALUMNI

14	U.S. Presidents	7	5	3	1

15	Current U.S. Senators	17	7	3	5

16	Current U.S. Supreme Court Justices	6	2	1	1

LAW SCHOOL

17	Supreme Court clerks 1991-2005	128	100	0	42

18	2005 Law School Class Hired by Top 50 law firms 	166	46	0	57

MEDICAL SCHOOL

19	2005 NIH grants ($billion)	1170	300	       N/A	244

20	Current Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators	32	17	3	13

BUSINESS SCHOOL 21	Alumni among Fortune 500 CEOs with MBA 23% N/A N/A N/A

Sources: 1. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112636.html 2. http://hul.harvard.edu/about.html http://www.yale.edu/oir/factsheet.html http://www.princeton.edu/main/library/ http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/libraries.html

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_laureates_by_university_affiliation 4. http://www.nasonline.org/site/Dir?sid=1011&view=basic&pg=srch 5. http://www.nae.edu/nae/naepub.nsf/Home+Page?OpenView 6. http://www.iom.edu/CMS/2951.aspx 7. http://www.nationalmerit.org/05_annual%20report.pdf 8. http://www.nationalmerit.org/05_annual%20report.pdf 9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_scholarship 10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_scholarship 11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putnam_mathematical_competition 12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putnam_mathematical_competition 13. http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/college/feederschools.htm 14. http://www.americanpresidents.org/ 15. http://www.vote-smart.org/index.htm 16. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/biographiescurrent.pdf 17. http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/1991scotus_clerks.shtml 18. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1126256708738 19. U.S. News and World Report 2006 Best Graduate Schools issue 20. http://www.hhmi.org/ 21. http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2005-04-06-cover-ceos_x.htm. Harvard is also the school with the most undergraduate alumni among the Fortune 500 CEOs (http://content.spencerstuart.com/sswebsite/pdf/lib/Statistical_Snapshot_of_Leading_CEOs_relB3.pdf#nameddest=GAedu).

verifiability issues with HYPS, HYPSM, and HYPSMC
As things stand, no sources are provided to show any significant widespread use of any of these initialisms. I find it very hard to imagine a guidance counsellor saying "if you want to get into one of the aitch why pee ess em cee schools...." The verifiability policy notes that "The burden of evidence lies with the editors who have made an edit or wish an edit to remain." So far, those editors have declined to do this.

If reasonable source citations from fairly reliable sources are not given, to show that these initialisms are truly in widespread use, not just jokes or hypothetical extensions of HYP, I'm going to remove them in about a week, and move the article back to HYP (universities).

References to blogs or online forums won't do; the question is not whether anyone has ever used these initialisms, but whether they are recognized and, in particular, widely used and understood by high-school guidance counsellors. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


 * P. S. I'd stress that the issue is not whether Stanford is as good as Princeton. I'm personally willing to grant that it is. Whatever that means. (Overall rankings seem silly to me. If I wanted to study hotel administration, I'd be an idiot to make Stanford OR Princeton OR Harvard my first choice, no matter how stellar their U. S. News overall ranking. If I wanted an MBA, no amount of Princeton boosting would Princeton a good choice. And, no matter how fine my alma mater may be, I would not recommend MIT to someone who wanted to major in modern languages.)


 * The issue is whether HYPSMC etc. are real initialisms in wide use. 


 * I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but my belief is that these initialisms are being used in a promotional way by people trying to make the (IMHO valid) point that Stanford, MIT and Caltech deserve to be thought of in the same category as HYP and are trying to create, establish, or promote a new meme. The question is whether or not this alleged new meme has actually taken hold. It's sort of like the Washington Monthly college rankings. It's a good idea and I'd like to see it get some traction, but has it? When the parents talk to the high school guidance counselor, does he drag out his copy of the Washington Monthly or does he drag out his copy of U. S. New and World Reports?


 * A Penn booster kept inserting "Penn is one of the Big Four" into the University of Pennsylvania article. Unfortunately, nobody was ever able to produce more than a few scrappy references to "Big Four," mostly referring to domination of particular sports at particular times... and the "fourth" member of the Big Four wasn't always Penn.


 * I could probably write "HYPP" and people might guess correctly that I meant "Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn" (or "Harvard, Yale, Penn and Princeton" if you prefer) but that doesn't make it a real initialism, either. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:28, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * P. P. S. Note too: articles on HYPS, HYPSM, and HYPSMC all were voted for deletion due mostly to verifiability problems; see Articles for deletion/HYPS, Articles for deletion/HYPSM, Articles for deletion/HYPSMC