That's fine. I don't mean Ivies in the strict sense. Perhaps I could use a smaller letter. To me, Stanford, Duke, Hopkins, Rice, and to some extent MIT and Caltech represent a very special level of colleges that are not just "top," but are also very famous (including abroad) in a way that schools like WashU and UCSF do not even come close. I don't have a particular name for these schools, so I call them "ivies" since they are up to par with the prestige and fame of the real Ivies. I haven't come up with a better name and for now will have to just keep using the small letter "ivy." I am sure you can cope. Just call Stanford the Ivy of the West, Duke the Ivy of the South, etc.