APRIL FOOLS’: This article was published as part of The News-Letter’s annual April Fools’ edition, an attempt at adding some humor to a newspaper that is normally very serious about its reporting. This is not true.
In a stunning press conference on Sunday, March 30, Vice President of Student Athlete Relations Chad Rockeley-DuPont announced that Hopkins is set to join the Ivy League conference for the 2026–2027 academic year, replacing Dartmouth College. Hopkins will remain a part of the Centennial Conference until the end of this academic term and will play the 2025–2026 season as an independent team before making the transition into the Ivy League.
This announcement comes after years of Hopkins making mincemeat out of Division III (D-III) competition while moving up the U.S. News and World Report’s academic rankings. While it is currently unclear whether this decision was made for athletic or academic reasons, either is defensible.
In an email to The News-Letter following the press conference, Deputy Spokesperson of the Ivy League Sylvester Spoons expressed her excitement on behalf of the universities.
“We are delighted that John Hopkins is bringing its academic talent and athletic prowess to the Ivy League,” she wrote, misspelling the University’s name.
Spoons did not address Dartmouth’s unexpected exit from the conference after nearly 70 years. The News-Letter reached out to Dartmouth’s athletic program regarding the situation but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Hopkins is highly regarded academically, as it is currently ranked as the #6 best school in the country according to U.S. News and World Report. This puts them above the majority of the Ivy League, only trailing the holy trinity: Princeton University, Harvard University and Yale University.
However, Spoons did comment on changes that Ivy League members expect from Hopkins as the University takes on this new venture.
“Well, they have the academics,” she remarked, “and sports will catch up, too — eventually. But what Hopkins needs to work on is their vibe: Depressed, burned-out nerds is not what we like here at the Ivy League. We’re cool, and we know it.”
In terms of Hopkins Athletics, specifically, athletes have been demanding more vigorous competition. The Blue Jays have won back-to-back Director’s Cups, an annual award given to the best D-III athletic school across all sports, and have a commanding lead in the 2024–2025 school year in their quest for a three-peat.
Hopkins has many advantages over the rest of the D-III; starting with the most obvious, we are a larger school in comparison to most of our Centennial Conference rivals. Most D-III schools have between 1,000 to 2,000 students, while Hopkins boasts an undergraduate population of just over 6,000 students, making them more comparable in size to a small Division I school (D-I).
The University also has significant recruiting advantages, due to the allure of highly-ranked academic programs, as well as the ability to bring in graduate students who are older and have already proved themselves at the college level. While these may be advantages currently for the University, in the Ivy League, they are simply par for the course.
This announcement has not been well-received by all. Hopkins lacrosse, currently the only D-I team on campus, currently competes in the Big Ten Conference, and their fate in the Ivy League is uncertain. Rockeley-DuPont addressed these concerns in the press conference.
“We appreciate the Big Ten conference for providing a competitive environment for our lacrosse program,” he said before announcing that Hopkins lacrosse would remain in the Big Ten for two seasons before switching to the Ivy League Conference in 2026–2027, along with the rest of the University.
This change could have far-reaching impacts on student life. Hopkins, which already has a 7% acceptance rate, will likely become even harder to get into due to the added prestige of the Ivy League.
There’s also the question of adding sports. The University is missing many sports that the Ivy League teams compete in, such as rowing and gymnastics; only time will tell if Hopkins is looking to expand its athletic program to better align itself with its new conference. In a fast-changing collegiate athlete world, there is also the question of how NIL, recruiting and graduate students will impact Hopkins.
Perhaps most intriguing is the question of how Hopkins will fare in their new conference. Despite dominating D-III competition in almost every sport, the jump up to D-I is a large one. Ivy League teams are expected to play out-of-conference schedules against Power Four teams, and seeing how the dust settles on the University’s first couple D-I seasons will be fascinating.
As Hopkins prepares for this monumental transition, questions remain about how the school will adapt to the demands of Ivy League competition, both athletically and academically. But, with a history of excellence in both fields, we have every confidence that the Blue Jays will rise to the occasion, and 2026 will mark a new era for Hopkins sports. GO JAYS!
