Colonial colleges

The colonial colleges are nine institutions of higher education chartered in the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution before the founding of the United States.^[1] These nine have long been considered together, notably since the survey of their origins in the 1907 The Cambridge History of English and American Literature.^{[2][non-primary source needed]}

Seven of the nine colonial colleges became seven of the eight Ivy League universities: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Brown, and Dartmouth. The remaining Ivy League institution, Cornell University, was founded in 1865. These are all private universities.

The two colonial colleges not in the Ivy League—the College of William & Mary in Virginia and Rutgers University in New Jersey—are now both public universities. William & Mary was a royal institution from 1693 until the American Revolution. Between the Revolution and the American Civil War, it was a private institution, but it suffered significant damage during the Civil War and began to receive public support in the 1880s. William & Mary officially became a public college in 1906.

Rutgers was founded in 1766 as Queen's College, named for Queen Charlotte. For much of its history, it was privately affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church. It changed its name to Rutgers College in 1825 and was designated as the State University of New Jersey after World War II.