TL;DR: New Ivies, Public Ivies, Hidden Ivies, and Little Ivies are four distinct labels from different sources. New Ivies is Forbes’s annual employer-driven list; Public Ivies (Moll, 1985) means Ivy-quality public universities; Hidden Ivies (Greene, 2000) means selective private colleges; Little Ivies means small Northeastern liberal arts colleges. Only the eight-member Ivy League is the actual Ivy League (multiple published sources).
Why there are so many kinds of Ivy
Families researching elite colleges quickly run into a thicket of Ivy labels: New Ivies, Public Ivies, Hidden Ivies, Little Ivies. They sound interchangeable, and they are routinely confused, but each is a distinct term from a distinct source, created at a different time and to make a different point. Understanding which is which prevents a common and consequential mistake: treating a magazine ranking, a 1985 book, and a 2000 book as if they described the same set of schools.
The reason the labels keep multiplying is straightforward. The Ivy League name is a powerful prestige signal, and over the decades authors and publications have repeatedly coined adjacent terms to direct families toward strong institutions beyond the original eight. For the full background on the most recent of these, see our explainer on what the New Ivies are. Here, the goal is to set all four side by side.
| Label | Source and year | Focus | Typical schools |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Ivies | Forbes, annual since 2024 | Employer perception of graduates | Mix of public and private universities |
| Public Ivies | Richard Moll, 1985 | Ivy-quality education at public cost | State flagship universities |
| Hidden Ivies | Howard & Matthew Greene, 2000 | Academic quality and selectivity | Selective private colleges and universities |
| Little Ivies | Informal, mid-20th century | Small, selective liberal arts environment | Northeastern liberal arts colleges |
| Ivy League | Athletic conference, 1954 | The actual eight-member group | Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale |
New Ivies: the employer-outcomes label
The New Ivies is the newest of the four and the only one updated every year. Forbes has published it annually since 2024, naming twenty universities, ten public and ten private, whose graduates employers rate most highly, based on surveys of hiring managers and recent graduates. Its defining feature is its focus: not selectivity, not cost, not size, but employer perception of graduate quality. That makes it the most directly relevant label for families whose primary concern is career outcomes, and the most volatile, since the roster shifts as survey results change.
Public Ivies: Ivy quality at public cost
Public Ivies is the oldest term of the group, coined by Richard Moll in 1985 to describe public universities that deliver an education rivaling the Ivy League at public-school prices. Its emphasis is value: top-tier academics without private-university cost, especially for in-state students. The concept predates the others by decades and centers on state flagship universities. A school can be both a Public Ivy and a New Ivy, but the Public Ivy label is about the quality-to-cost ratio of public education specifically, not about employer surveys.
Hidden Ivies and Little Ivies: selectivity and scale
The Hidden Ivies comes from a 2000 book by Howard and Matthew Greene, describing selective private colleges and universities outside the Ivy League that offer a comparable academic experience. Its focus is on the quality and rigor of the undergraduate education rather than on employer outcomes, and it spans a broad range of selective private institutions. The Little Ivies, by contrast, is an older, informal term for a cluster of small, highly regarded liberal arts colleges in the Northeast, many associated with the NESCAC athletic grouping. Where the Hidden Ivies label is about selective private quality broadly, the Little Ivies is specifically about small-college, liberal-arts character.
Set against the New Ivies, these two labels answer different questions. A student drawn to a small, discussion-based liberal arts environment is served by the Little Ivies; one seeking a selective private university experience by the Hidden Ivies; one prioritizing employer outcomes by the New Ivies; and one seeking high-quality public education by the Public Ivies. The labels are tools for different goals, not competing rankings of the same thing.
Which label should guide your list?
The honest answer is that the labels are starting points, not destinations. The most useful one depends entirely on what a family is optimizing for: outcomes, cost, selectivity, or environment. For most families focused on career results, the New Ivies is the most actionable because it is current and employer-driven, but it should never be the last word. Once a label points to a set of candidate schools, the real work begins, evaluating each one on fit, cost, acceptance rate, and the specific outcomes that matter to the student.
The deeper lesson is to hold all of these labels lightly. Only the eight-member Ivy League is an actual, fixed group; everything else is a descriptive shorthand designed, in part, to satisfy the demand for prestige signals. Families who understand that use the labels to broaden and inform their research, and then make decisions based on the schools themselves rather than the adjectives attached to them.
Frequently Asked Questions About Ivy Labels
They come from different sources and mean different things. Public Ivies, a term coined by Richard Moll in 1985, describes public universities that offer an Ivy-caliber education at public-school cost. The New Ivies is Forbes’s annually updated list of twenty schools, both public and private, whose graduates employers rate highly. Some schools appear in both, but the concepts are not the same.
The Hidden Ivies is a label from a 2000 book by Howard and Matthew Greene describing selective private colleges and universities outside the Ivy League that offer a comparable quality of education. It focuses on academic experience and selectivity rather than employer outcomes, which distinguishes it from the employer-driven New Ivies list.
No. The Little Ivies is an informal, older term for a group of small, highly regarded liberal arts colleges in the Northeast, many of them members of the historic NESCAC athletic grouping. The New Ivies is a recent Forbes ranking of larger universities based on employer perception. The two describe very different kinds of institutions.
Not as formal credentials. Employers and graduate schools evaluate the specific institution and, far more, the individual’s record, rather than whether a school carries an unofficial Ivy label. The New Ivies list reflects employer perception of certain schools, but no applicant gains an edge by citing a label. What matters is the school’s actual reputation in a field and the student’s accomplishments there.
Yes, frequently. A single university can be described as a Public Ivy and also appear on the New Ivies list, and selective privates can be called Hidden Ivies while also being New Ivies. The overlap is why the terms are easy to confuse. The key is to remember each label’s source and purpose rather than treating them as one interchangeable category.
No. Only the Ivy League itself, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale, is the actual Ivy League, an athletic conference with fixed membership. Every other label, New, Public, Hidden, and Little Ivies, is a descriptive term created by an author or publication to highlight schools of comparable quality or outcomes. None confers Ivy League membership.
Because the Ivy League name signals prestige, writers and publications have repeatedly coined adjacent labels to point families toward strong schools beyond the original eight. Each emerged at a different time and with a different emphasis: cost, selectivity, size, or, most recently, employer outcomes. The proliferation reflects demand for prestige signals more than any official expansion of the Ivy League.
Often, but not uniformly. Many schools described by these labels are selective, yet selectivity varies enormously within every list, and a label is not a reliable proxy for admissions difficulty. A school’s published acceptance rate and its requirements for the student’s intended program are far better guides than any Ivy-adjacent designation.
Sources: Forbes New Ivies (annual list), NCES College Navigator, IPEDS, NACAC., IPEDS, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, College Board BigFuture
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