8-11-2023 4:29am

GOUCHER: "ALT-IVY"

Hunt Valley Life Staff

From the T&C Archives: The Original Alt-Ivies List

Back in 1973, T&C published a list of 50 Alt-Ivies. How much has changed in half a century?

BY LEENA KIM, Town And Country

CURTIS F. MOUSSIE

Fifty years ago, Town & Country dedicated a section of the August 1973 issue to all things college. In a package that included an article about the controversial democratization of the Ivy League's most elite secret societies, and of course the requisite "How to Get Your Son and Daughter into Harvard, Yale, or Princeton" (plus ça change...), we published a list of 50 Ivy League Alternatives, otherwise known as the Alt-Ivies.

"For a son or daughter who may not be attractive to—or attracted by—an Ivy League college, fifty colleges of unusually fine quality are characterized here," we wrote. "For the most part, these are smaller colleges with an even greater sense of personal closeness on campus than at the Ivies." All of the schools chosen were considered highly selective at the time, and none had more than 6,000 undergraduates. For reasons unexplained, the Seven Sisters colleges (Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley) were left off.

So how much has changed in half a century? Some schools on this original tally are still considered Alt-Ivies in 2023, holding court on many a college applicant's wish list. Many are on our recent ranking of the best liberal arts colleges worth the money. A few are now so incredibly selective they may as well be Ivies (Stanford!), while others have lost their luster in the decades since (see: Goucher, FINISH READING HERE