The Editor, Sir:

I have noticed on several occasions that our local news media use the term Ivy League to refer to any school that is supposed to have pedigree.

In a recent newspaper social column, reference was made to a recent graduate of Boston's Ivy League Tufts University.

Tufts is not an Ivy League institution, albeit a well-regarded one.

The Ivy League consists of eight institutions of higher learning, mainly located in the north-eastern United States

They started out as male secular colleges during the American colonial period. These schools to this day are highly rated, even though from time to time, they are outranked by public and private universities, such as the University of Michigan and Stanford University, respectively.

The Ivy League institutions are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dart-mouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and Yale.

Similarly, the traditional 'Seven Sisters', referred to an elite set of schools, started out as female colleges and were counterparts to the Ivy League male schools.

The original Seven Sisters are Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke , Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley .

Keeping in mind that while there are scores of top-flight schools of higher learning all across the world, the term Ivy League refers to a specific set of elite institutions.

I am, etc.,

CHRISTOPHER PRYCE

christopherjmpryce@yahoo.com