The Ivy League is an athletic conference of eight colleges and universities in the Northeastern United States, founded in 1954 at Princeton University. The Ivy League is unique among American college sports conferences: its members banned athletic scholarships to reinforce their primary commitment to academics. The members of the organization-- officially the Council of Ivy Presidents-- are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.