Gossip Girl. Literally every prestigious college is named and discussed at some point.
Indiana Jones went to the University of Chicago
Mr. Magoo went to Rutgers.
Niles Crane from Frasier went to Yale.
Fictional college (though similar to Brown when I was there early 90s): PCU, Port Chester University
The main characters in St Elmo’s Fire all went to Georgetown
In For Keeps, the guy wants to go to CalTech for architecture and the girl wants journalism at University of Wisconsin
The women soccer players in Bend It Like Beckham get recruited to Santa Clara University
I think Andi from Devil Wears Prada says she graduated from Northwestern
When Harry Met Sally…they drive from U of Chicago to New York, where Sally is going to grad school at NYU
Sigourney Weaver’s character in Working Girl went to Wellesley
Michael Douglas in War of the Roses went to Harvard Law
Thurston Howell lll …harvard.
The fictional character from the Apprentice allegedly went to Wharton.
In Struck by Lightening, a high school student is struck lightning and killed and he recounts the way he blackmailed his classmates into contributing to his literary magazine so that he could get into his dream college: Northwestern University.
NESCAC colleges appear in Jaws (Trinity, minor character, student), American Graffiti (Middlebury, minor character, did not graduate), Our Town (Hamilton, major character, graduate) and Animal House (Amherst, semi-farcical reference).
Snake on the Simpsons attended Middlebury and Lisa attends the Broadloaf Writers Conference, also at Middlebury. The three main characters in First Wives Club all attended Middlebury.
That pop culture icon Donald Trump aka “the Donald” went to Wharton of the University of Pennsylvania.
After he went to Fordham first.
And laughingly, supposedly some of his people said he graduated “first in his class” but there is no record at Penn of him graduating with any honors at all.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - main character Rebecca went to Yale and Harvard. Her nemesis, Audra Levine, went to Cornell the “community college of the Ivies”. I always find the Cornell slamming to be particularly funny since I went to Cornell.
Michael Steadman and Gary Shepherd on “Thirtysomething” had been roommates at Penn. And Gary was an English professor at Haverford College (who was denied tenure!). (Ken Olin, who played Michael, went to Penn too.)
The oldest Dubois girl on “Medium,” Ariel, headed to Dartmouth for college.
Julia Braverman on the NBC version of “Parenthood” went to Stanford, while niece Haddie headed to Cornell; nephew Drew remained in town after he was accepted to Berkeley. (Drew’s HS girlfriend, Amy, left California for Tufts.)
And Chuck Bartowski from “Chuck” was expelled from Stanford!
How has no one mentioned this one yet? Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) in Legally Blonde- Harvard University.
Oh and Orson Welles’ character in Citizen Kane went to almost all the Ivies- Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Standford, and the list goes on!
Animal House is said to take place at Dartmouth, but it was filmed at the University of Oregon.
In the original Devil Wears Prada book, Andi went to Brown, and in the movie she’s a Northwestern alumna.
In Inventing The Abbotts, a bunch of the characters go to Penn, including the one Liv Tyler plays, I think.
In Mistress America, the character played by Lola Kirke goes to Barnard (like the film’s screenwriter and co-star, Greta Gerwig), and several classmates from Columbia and Barnard are in the movie.
The Skulls, of course, takes place at Yale, although I am not certain Yale is ever named (and it certainly wasn’t filmed for this movie).
Mona Lisa Smile takes place largely at Wellesley.
In the film Orange County, the main character is trying to get into Stanford, and goes there to interview. A large part of Dope involves the central character’s admissions interview with a local Harvard alumnus, and his subsequent admission to Harvard.
Whit Stillman’s movies are full of characters with specific colleges. The main character in Metropolitan is a freshman at Princeton. A number of the men in Last Days of Disco were friends at Harvard, and the central women were classmates at Hampshire.
In Carnal Knowledge, Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel begin as roommates at Amherst, and I believe the Candace Bergen character goes to Smith.
Some other Harvard movies: A Small Circle of Friends, Stealing Harvard, Harvard Man. And there is a fabulous PBS/Nova documentary Doctors Diaries following 7 Harvard medical students through medical school and then 20 years later.
Proof involves grad students at the University of Chicago and Northwestern, and was filmed on both campuses. There’s also a lot of UChicago in Divergent – one of its libraries plays the Erudite headquarters in the first film, but not subsequent ones.
Grey’s Anatomy- Cristina Yang went to Stanford and I think also UC Berkeley.
Meredith went to Dartmouth
Lexie went to Harvard Med School
“Snake on The Simpsons attended Middlebury” (#29)
Did he? Or did he just rock a Midd shirt?
Otto, if I recall, attended Brown.