do ivy League schools have individual colleges the same way Oxford and Cambridge do?

12 comments

1. That’s how every university is structured over here, ivy league or otherwise.

2. Not really in the same way.

   US Universities have different colleges by study area. Liberal arts, engineering, medicine, agriculture, etc.

   It isn’t the same as the way Oxford and Cambridge operate with several colleges under one umbrella university but not split into specialties.

3. No they have various schools within the university that specialise in different fields but not the college system like that

4. Our colleges are an academic division. They’ll usually have their own dean, budgets, etc. My university even had few colleges with higher fees. College of Engineering and Design, College of Business Administration, College of Human Ecology, College of Arts & Sciences and so on. Within those you have the different academic departments. The department or school of Architecture, the Department of English, the Social Work department, and so on. There are also often honor societies within these smaller departments which are open to students with a certain grade average. These and maybe some dorms take the place of the social aspects of your colleges.

5. Yes, many “ivies” do and a handful of other prestigious universities as well. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Rice, Dartmouth, as well as UC Santa Cruz and UC San Diego have colleges similar to Oxford and Cambridge. They are all “collegiate universities”.

6. The closest we have is Yale University, which has residential colleges. It is my understanding that the residential colleges have tutors, residential professors, and such just like Cambridge’s colleges do.

7. The names tend to vary (though “college”) is the most common division.

   The big exception for all 3 ivies I’ve attended in various capacities is that there tends to be one or two “colleges” that are so big and diverse that they might as well be renamed “College of Not Engineering and Not Anything Else We’re Famous For.”

   So for example my alma mater had the “College of Arts and Sciences”, which in practice could have been renamed the “College of Not Medicine and Not Engineering” without changing anything but the letterhead.

8. Having attended an Ivy: other than Upenn (liberal arts undergrad, nursing, Wharton business school) and Cornell, which has several internal schools, no, they don’t. It’s a different system.

9. It depends.

   Harvard and Yale have a “house” system, similar to Hogwarts. Everyone is affiliated with their house but also attends the same undergraduate college (Harvard College, etc).

   Columbia doesn’t do that, all undergraduates are split between Columbia College (liberal arts) and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

   Where you see a system with multiple colleges is at the graduate school (Masters and Doctorate) level.

10. Harvard and Yale do. At Harvard, they’re called houses, but they’re called colleges (or residential colleges) at Yale.

    It’s easy to think of them as just dorms, but there’s more to them than that, at least as Yale. Unlike dorms at other universities, undergraduates at Yale almost always stay associated with the same college for all four years, though the freshmen don’t live in the college. Intramural sports are organized around the colleges. Each college has its own cafeteria, its own dean (who does dean stuff), it’s own master (who is more responsible for the sense of community), various clubs and social activities. I realize that dorms at other schools often do the same, but not as ingrained into the culture as these are.

    Academically, they will offer a handful of custom seminars courses each term, typically with guest professors and dealing with subjects that the main Yale College departments can’t justify giving. I suspect that most students don’t take any of their college’s seminars, but I took two, one on semiotics, and one on science fiction.
    .

    I know that they’re not quite the same as the Oxbridge college system, but it’s a good system that helps give students many of the benefits of a smaller college.

    Some trivia: The late Bart Giamatti, who was best known for being the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, was the master of one of Yale’s residential colleges before become President of the University.

    Also, the former Calhoun College (named after US Vice President John C. Calhoun) was recently renamed Grade Hopper College, in honor of computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper, who received her Ph.D. from Yale.

11. All universities do. In order to be a university, you have to have multiple colleges within them.

12. UC San Diego has a similar system.