A Big Ten school is one of the 18 universities that belong to the Big Ten Conference, one of the oldest and most prominent athletic conferences in American college sports. But the Big Ten is more than a sports league. Its member schools are large, well-funded research universities that share academic resources, library collections, and student programs through a formal partnership called the Big Ten Academic Alliance.
The 18 Member Schools
The Big Ten Conference has grown well beyond its original Midwestern roots. As of 2025, the conference includes 18 universities spread across the country, from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest:
- University of Illinois
- Indiana University
- University of Iowa
- University of Maryland
- University of Michigan
- Michigan State University
- University of Minnesota
- University of Nebraska
- Northwestern University
- The Ohio State University
- Penn State University
- Purdue University
- Rutgers University
- University of Oregon
- UCLA
- USC
- University of Washington
- University of Wisconsin
The most recent additions are Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington, all West Coast schools that joined as part of the broader college conference realignment that reshaped the landscape of college athletics. The name “Big Ten” is a holdover from when the conference had ten members, and the league has never updated it to match the actual count.
What Big Ten Schools Have in Common
Most Big Ten schools are large public research universities with sizable undergraduate populations. The conference includes seven of the 20 largest undergraduate enrollments in the country, with schools like Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan routinely enrolling well over 30,000 undergraduates. Even at the smaller end of the spectrum, most Big Ten campuses have at least 19,000 to 22,000 undergrads. The notable outlier is Northwestern, a private university with roughly 8,800 undergraduates, making it by far the smallest school in the conference.
Selectivity varies widely. Northwestern, UCLA, Michigan, and USC are among the most competitive universities in the country, with single-digit or low-teens acceptance rates. Others, like Nebraska and Iowa, admit a majority of applicants. What ties them together is their scale of research output, faculty size, and the breadth of academic programs they offer.
Athletics and Media Revenue
For many people, “Big Ten school” is synonymous with big-time college sports. The conference fields teams in football, basketball, and dozens of other sports, and its football games regularly draw some of the largest crowds in college athletics. Stadiums at Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State each hold over 100,000 fans.
The financial side is equally massive. The Big Ten’s television and media rights contracts generate enormous revenue for member schools. Each university can earn as much as $70 million a year from media rights alone, a figure that was a key factor in attracting Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington to leave their former conference. That revenue funds athletic scholarships, facilities, coaching staffs, and increasingly, the name-image-likeness payments that go to student athletes.
Academic Benefits for Students
Beyond sports, Big Ten schools collaborate through the Big Ten Academic Alliance, a consortium that gives students access to resources far beyond their own campus. If you attend any member university, you can tap into several shared programs.
The most tangible benefit is reciprocal library borrowing. The combined Big Ten library system holds over 112 million volumes, and students at any member school can borrow materials from the others. For graduate students and researchers, this is a significant advantage that rivals private university library networks.
The alliance also runs a CourseShare program that lets students take courses in less commonly taught languages offered at other Big Ten campuses. If your school doesn’t offer a particular language, you may be able to take it remotely through another member institution.
For students considering graduate school, the alliance offers several pipeline programs. The Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) gives undergraduates hands-on research experience designed to prepare them for doctoral programs at Big Ten universities. Doctoral students can use the Traveling Scholar program to spend time working with faculty or using specialized equipment at another Big Ten school without transferring. The alliance even offers graduate application fee waivers through its FreeApp program and research fellowships in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution.
Why the Label Matters
When someone describes a university as “a Big Ten school,” they’re signaling a few things at once. The school is likely large, has a strong research profile, competes at the highest level of college athletics, and belongs to a network of peer institutions that share resources. For prospective students, it can mean access to a wide alumni network, nationally televised sports, and academic collaboration opportunities that smaller conferences simply don’t offer. For sports fans, it identifies one of the most competitive and lucrative conferences in the country. Either way, the Big Ten label carries weight both inside and outside the classroom.