So, I guess there’s a lot of pop culture about Ivies and similar schools, like in Degrassi, Legally Blonde, and High School Musical, to name a few (Legally Blonde: Elle Woods/Harvard Law, HSM: Gabriela/Stanford, Degrassi: Holly J./Yale, Claire/Columbia, Connor and Tiny/Caltech, Ally/MIT, Esme/Harvard and Columbia, etc.)
Does anyone out there who watches/watched these show and movies have any commentary on it? How realistic do you think it was? Any gripes or complaints? Does anyone know any other shows/movies where this happens? (I’m sure there are a ton).
P.S. this thread is for the sole purpose of having an analytical discussion and I don’t want anyone to misconstrue it as a chances thread/ a “how to get into the top colleges” sort of thing.
I think every tv and movie character that has ever attended college has gone to HYPMS/etc. :))
I’ve been noticing that dialogue always has to name-drop too, like “We met at Stanford” or “I took some time off from Harvard.” In real life, normal people would say “We met at college” or “I took time off from college”.
Appropos of nothing, there was an eye-rolling scene on Blue Bloods where one of the characters got in to Stanford after being waitlisted, and was all emo about it “I don’t know if I want to go anymore because it feels like they don’t want me”.
Tying in to a previous CC thread, on an episode of Criminal Minds I saw recently, they profiled one character as humble-bragging on purpose when he said he went to school in Cambridge and New Haven instead of coming and saying Harvard and Yale.
Legally Blonde seemed “realistic” to the extent that the rigor of Elle’s major [or lack thereof] was irrelevant and all that mattered was her GPA and LSAT score.
My DD and DW are watching Gilmore Girls and I saw a scene where the mom was yelling at the daughter for applying to Yale and Princeton as backups. Apparently they had grown up assuming the daughter would always go to Harvard. I think the grandfather made some comment about some other boy that even applied to Wesleyan to make sure he got into a school.
I didn’t see any evidence that those kids from Degrassi deserved to go to the schools they did. (Maybe Claire got in through some sort of writing program?)
How could they study with all that drama?!?!?
And how come more Canadian or UK colleges were not mentioned in Degrassi???
Some of the best college movies are set at fictional schools, e.g.:
Animal House (1978) - Faber College
Revenge of the Nerds (1984) - Adams College
Back to School(1986) - Grand Lakes University
National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002) - Coolidge College
Old School (2003) - Harrison University
These are all comedies, so certain recognizable aspects of college life are exaggerated for comic effect. But they work only because there’s a nugget of truth at their core.
IKR with Degrassi, right!?! I think Claire’s beating cancer and her essay about it helped. They did mention some Canadian and UK colleges (Bantang, which is fictional, Queens, Toronto University, London College of Arts, Cambridge). Also, Ally deserved to go to MIT. Her research was awesome!
I thought the size of Rory’s (Gilmore Girls) room at Yale was unrealistic. Living room decorated by her grandmother, with a big TV cabinet, two couches, reading area. There are a few episodes at the end of the series where Paris (her frienemy) is being accepted to law schools and medical schools all over the country, Hopkins medical, Georgetown law. Right, that’s how it works.
I found the college search on Modern Family to be funny and rather realistic. The older daughter who is ‘less academic’ received rejection after rejection, and finally a wait list, which they all celebrated (and then she went to school and was put on probation for drinking). The ‘smart’ sister and her friends were all trying to get into MIT and Stanford and CalTech, and the process seemed true In real life, it is the youngest (son) who is a genius and could probably go to any college he wanted to, but on the show he’s having trouble graduating from high school.
The show I relate to the most is the Middle, where the oldest goes to school on a football scholarship, screws up, lives in a Winnebago, but always makes it work out. His internship is mostly getting coffee orders. Sister does everything right, has charts for college admissions and paperwork due dates, and ends up at the same school as her brother. Second year she screws up on her financial aid and loses it all. Much more like my life, my kids.
I’ve never seen Big Bang Theory. But it wouldn’t surprise me if that was their alma mater. I also forgot to mention on Degrassi Kaitie got into Stanford. I’m guessing it was her athlete status. But it didn’t make sense that she had to take out so many loans-isn’t Stanford 100% meet need? Katie wasn’t rich so…?
I saw this great short video on what we would say if we were being honest in college apps, and one of them was “I live in a rich Jewish neighborhood. Does that count as diversity?” It was SO funny!
When the movie, Admission, first came out in 2013, I thought to myself that it’d be somewhat interesting and entertaining to watch when I have absolutely nothing else useful to do with my life. Little did I know at the time that we’d be actually visiting Princeton on its Preview Day just this past April. Just a day before flying out to Princeton, as a “prep” for the Preview Day, we all sat down to watch the movie for the first time, having enough reason to be motivated. The whole time we were at the Preview Day, listening to the Dean of Admissions, I couldn’t shake off the association with the movie. The movie was quite entertaining, funny and improbably silly.
Lip on Shameless goes to MIT and gets arrested for smashing his professor’s car. He blew so many chance. I was really rooting for him. (I know, it’s just a show)
Everyone told me that the fictional lead characters on the TV Show “The Affair” went to Williams in the story on the TV show. When I was told there was an episode when they visited Williams with their daughter, I was so excited. I taped and watched the episode. Alas, the building featured was… not a Williams building! I looked up where the show is usually filmed, saw it was New York, and looked for the building by looking up images of city-area colleges. The building is at Fordham.
On the show Billions, much is made of the pedigrees of the characters. Attorney Chuck and his father with their frequent Yale references, the brilliant financial analysts at Axe Capital and their various elite degrees, juxtaposed with the rags-to-riches Bobby Axelrod who -gasp- went to Hofstra.
Also, not sure what it is about Hofstra that seems to attract scorn in TV land, but on Friends From College the friend group is all from Harvard and they’re snobbishly dismissive of the Hofstra alum husband of one of the friend group members. Even his wife is openly rude to him when he dares to express an opinion about his reading preferences!
