Colonial colleges
Institution ( present name , where different ) Colony or state Founded Chartered Religious influence
King William 's School , Annapolis ( absorbed by St. John 's College when the latter was founded ) Province of Maryland 1696 1784 Church of England
Kent County Free School ( absorbed by Washington College when the latter was founded ) Province of Maryland 1723 1782 Non-sectarian
Bethlehem Female Seminary ( Moravian College ) Province of Pennsylvania 1742 1863 Moravian Church
Free School ( University of Delaware ) Delaware Colony ( semi-autonomous part of the Province of Pennsylvania ) 1743 1833 Presbyterian , but officially non-sectarian after 1769
Augusta Academy ( Washington and Lee University ) Colony and Dominion of Virginia 1749 1782 Presbyterian , but officially nonsectarian
College of Charleston Province of South Carolina 1770 1785 Church of England
Pittsburgh Academy ( University of Pittsburgh ) Province / Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 1770 ? 1787 Non-sectarian
Little Girls ' School ( Salem College ) Province of North Carolina 1772 1866 Moravian Church
Dickinson College Province of Pennsylvania 1773 1783 Presbyterian
Hampden-Sydney College Colony and Dominion of Virginia 1775 1783 Presbyterian
Other colonial-era foundations
Several other colleges and universities can be traced to colonial-era `` academies '' or `` schools '' , but are not considered colonial colleges because they were not formally chartered as colleges with degree-granting powers until after the formation of the United States in 1776 . Listed below are the founding dates of the schools which served as predecessor entities and the years in which they were chartered to operate an institution of higher learning .
The colonial colleges are nine institutions of higher education chartered in the Thirteen Colonies before the United States of America became a sovereign nation after the American Revolution. These nine have long been considered together, notably in the survey of their origins in the 1907 The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. Seven of the nine colonial colleges are part of the Ivy League athletic conference: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania (Penn), Brown, and Dartmouth. (The eighth member of the Ivy League, Cornell, was founded in 1865.) The two colonial colleges not in the Ivy League are now both public universities - The College of William & Mary in Virginia and Rutgers University in New Jersey. William & Mary was a royal charter institution from 1693 until the American Revolution. Between the Revolution and the American Civil War, William & Mary was a private institution. 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 as Queens College, named for Queen Charlotte, and was for much of its history privately affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church. It became The State University of New Jersey after World War II.