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The Big Three is a historical term used in the United States to refer to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. The phrase Big Three originated in the 1880s, when these three colleges dominated college football.〔Synnott, Marsha G. (The "Big Three" and the Harvard-Princeton Football Break, 1926-1934 ).〕 High schools' college admissions counselors and colleges' admissions guides sometimes use the initialism ''HYP'' to refer to these colleges. In the early 1900s, these schools formed a sports compact that predates the Ivy League. The rivalry remains intense, though the three schools are no longer athletic powers, and schools continue to refer to their intercollegiate competitions as "Big Three" or "Harvard-Yale-Princeton" meets. ==Historic status== These colleges have, in the past, been set apart from others by a special historic connection with the White-Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment; as Edward Digby Baltzell writes, "The three major upper-class institutions in America have been Harvard, Yale, and Princeton." Baltzell also goes on to write that "Throughout the thirties and well into the forties, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania were still staffed almost entirely by old-stock Protestants." Of the three, Princeton University was traditionally the preferred choice of the Southern upper class. Theodore Roosevelt put the three schools into social context: The ''Saturday Review'' found in 1963 that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton enrolled 45% of boys on the New York Social Register. The University of Pennsylvania was fourth and the other Ivy League members had far fewer, below such schools as Trinity College and the University of Virginia. That year Nathaniel Burt described the social prestige of the Big Three: Burt continued, "Every city sends or has sent its Socially Registered sons to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, in some preferred order, and to one local institution. This order varies. New York sets the pattern with Yale first, Harvard second, Princeton third, then Columbia. St. Louis and Baltimore are Princeton towns. Most other cities (Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati) are Yale towns. Only Boston, and occasionally Washington, are Harvard towns." The connection between certain colleges and social ranking is old; Jerome Karabel, in a note citing Kenneth Davis, says that "in the mid-eighteenth century, the (of Harvard ) personally listed students when they enrolled, according to ... 'to the Dignity of the Familie whereto the student severally belong'—a list that was printed in the college catalogue and that determined precedence in such matters as table seating, position in academic processionals, even recitations in class." Ronald Story, however, says that it was during “the four decades from 1815 to 1855” that “parents, in Henry Adams′ words, began sending their children to Harvard College for the sake of its social advantages.” A further intensification of the importance of the Big Three occurred during the 1920s; According to E. Digby Baltzell, “in a … managerial society, the proper college degree became the main criterion for potential elite status… it was during the () that certain institutions of high prestige, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton (and Stanford on the West Coast) became all-important as upper-class-ascribing institutions.” Not coincidentally, this was also the era when the Big Three became concerned by “the Jewish problem” and began instituting interviews, essays, and judgements of “character” into the admissions process.〔Karabel, op. cit, Part I, ''The Origins of Selective Admissions, 1900-1933''〕 From the 1930s on, Big Three admissions became progressively more meritocratic, but still included non-academic factors such as “lineage.” Harvard, Yale and Princeton have in the past been regarded as the goals for many children in WASP circles. Some educators have attempted to discourage this fixation. Jay Mathews, author of ''Harvard Schmarvard'', addresses seniors obsessed with HYP, and similar prestigious institutions, with the analysis: “It does not matter where you go to school, it matters what you do when you get there and what you do after you graduate.” 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Big Three (colleges)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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