The colonial colleges are nine institutions of higher education chartered in the American Colonies before the American Revolution (1775-1783). 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. Although today most of these institutions refer to themselves as "universities", they are called "colonial colleges" partly because, at the time of the revolution, only Penn called itself a "university". Each had assumed the power to grant academic degrees, a power in Europe only held by universities; several were offering some graduate instruction. (See college for more on American usage of that word.)

The nine colonial colleges are listed below in order of foundation under the name by which they were known for the bulk of the colonial period. Also listed are the religious groups that were instrumental in each college's foundation and early history. In most cases the listed religious links, although often strong, were de facto rather than official. (At any rate, all have long since affirmed their secularity.) In addition to the religious/secular boundary, the line between state and private control was also far more blurred than today: as the distinction crystallized over time, some schools became fully independent and others part of their state's higher-education system.

Seven of the nine colonial colleges are part of the Ivy League athletic conference: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth. (The eighth member of the Ivy League, Cornell University, was founded in 1865.) The two colonial colleges not in the Ivy League are both public universities—The College of William & Mary (in the Colonial Athletic Association) and Rutgers University, the state university of New Jersey (in the Big East Conference).