Ivy League is an athletic conference, or at best a collection of prestigious schools from the north east:
The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.
I think the colloquialism of "Ivy League" as a psuedo pedigree or class distinction has superseded the actual athletic conference definition.
I knew exactly what the OP was driving at even if the details were off, and only after you point out that Ivy League is an athletic conference did it occur to me that that would be where the current colloquialism came from.
even without it being related to the athletic conference, and refering only to those schools, that is for the most part a completely different set of schools than the ones whose alumni are involved in the startup/VC game.
The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.
I don't think this is what you mean.