I saw the word, ‘Oxbridge’, a portmanteau of Oxford and Cambridge, in a comment to a question asking for a better word for ‘invigilator’:
Whereas the situation is reversed in the UK, and one in a thousand would recognize proctor — although even the one in a thousand would be the one who went to Oxbridge and would give it a different meaning altogether.
We have the abbreviation “東大一ツ橋” (Todaihitotsubashi) combining the names of Tokyo University and Hitotsubashi University, both national universities, as a symbolic phrase of elitist schools, though I don’t know why Hitotsubashi University singly skewed to economics was paired to Tokyo University out of 783 universities and colleges (in 2012) in Japan.
In the sports area, we have the word “早慶” (Sohkei), an abbreviated combination of Waseda University and Keio University, both private universities excelling in baseball, rugby, soccer and many other sports, as well as in academic achievement.
Is there an American counterpart of “Oxbridge”, “Sohkei” and “Todaihitotsubashi,” or does “Yale-Harvard” suffice?
Best Answer
I'm going to omit any caveats and disclaimers, and say that yes, there is an American equivalent of Oxbridge, and it's ivy league. Yes, there are elite colleges in the US that are not traditionally part of the Ivy League, but they can still be described as ivy league (lowercase/adjectival form); and the US is a larger place than the UK (or Japan, for that matter), so it stands to reason that our equivalent of Oxbridge would include a larger group of institutions.
If you really want to restrict your expression to two institutions, that would be Harvard/Yale, which doesn't really lend itself to a portmanteau word. (Haryale? Yalevard? You see the problem.)