How about IQ? In the movie, Catherine Boyd (Meg Ryan) is a successful Princeton University mathematics doctoral candidate who falls in love with a garage mechanic in town (Tim Robbins) with some help from her uncle, Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau).
Ben Wyatt on Parks and Recreation went to Carleton.
“Breaking Away” about a guy wanting to be a competitive bicycle racer was filmed on campus in Bloomington, Indiana. (Indiana University). Dennis Christopher and Dennis Quaid.
Tim Matheson’s line “I’m Frank Lyman from Amherst” from the John Belushi classic Animal House. His character is visiting a fictional Smith College calling on the deceased Fawn Leibowitz to garner sympathy from her housemates in his efforts to hook up with one. The name Frank Lyman appears on a plaque under a bridge that leads into Amherst College. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asnzmpORTE8
Noted archaeologist Dr. Indiana Jones attended the University of Chicago.
HAL, the evil computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey was from the University of Illinois in Urbana.
I think Elaine from Seinfeld went to Tufts.
Mary Jensen (There’s Something About Mary) went to Princeton.
Forrest Gump went to the University of Alabama.
@basil1 - the How I Met Your Mother characters went to Wesleyan, not Williams.
Frasier Crane went to Harvard, and never tired of telling people that.
His brother Niles Crane went to Yale.
Miss Jane Hathaway went to Vassar.
Rhett Butler went to West Point but was thrown out.
I just watched The House with Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler. Their daughter gets accepted to Bucknell
Hofstra was regarded by many NYkers…especially those from my public magnet as the private counterpart to the CCNY/CUNY system when it was at its academic nadir in the '80s and '90s.
Basically, the only kids who tended to attend are either rich tri-state area kids who were near/at the bottom of their graduating class whose only other option was the local CUNY or community college or a minority of not-so-well off kids with slightly higher stats who managed to wrangle a full-ride scholarship.
As such, it’s no surprise why Hofstra would be targeted for such treatment…especially if the TV writers attended Ivy/peer elite colleges.
Spencer Hastings (Pretty Little Liars) can’t get into Penn, so attends Georgetown U.
Walter White (Breaking Bad) California Institute of Technology. Bryan Cranston: Los Angeles Valley College.
Real Genius (1985) set at a school supposedly based on Caltech.
Blue Like Jazz (2012) is set at Reed. Haven’t seen it yet.
The Rules of Attraction (2002) is set at a school based partially on Bennington, I think? Haven’t seen yet.
Matthew Broderick’s character in The Freshman (1990) is a film student at NYU.
Adventureland (2009) features another NYU student, Em, played by Kristen Stewart. Jesse Eisenberg’s character, James, is a recently graduated Class of 1987 Oberlin alum planning to attend Columbia for grad school. Before IMDB removed their Message Board feature, there used to be this gigantic, nearly endless thread debating whether the film was accurate or not. I felt that the film was a fairly accurate depiction of that era. I honestly couldn’t figure out why people were getting so worked up about alleged inaccuracies.
I could imagine the three main characters, Eisenberg’s James, Stewart’s Em and Martin Starr’s Joel plausibly being Carls – especially Joel. They may all have been a bit too cynical for Carleton, but at least fashion-wise they would’ve fit in at Carleton. However, the Margarita Levieva character, Lisa P, would be more the St Olaf stereotype.
Speaking of St Olaf, Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford, Leonardo DiCaprio, among others) is a St Olaf dropout. He also briefly attended Trinity College, Oxford.
Going back to Carleton, the most accurate depiction of Carleton in fiction that I’ve seen is in the novel Tam Lin by Pamela Dean.
Also, I think I read somewhere that some of the characters in Whiplash (2014) are Carls, but I haven’t seen the film yet, so I can’t comment.
The titular character of Flash Gordon (1980) is a Yale graduate, I think???
James McAvoy’s character in The Last King of Scotland (2006), Dr Garrigan, is a University of Edinburgh graduate.
In Starter for Ten (2006), McAvoy is a student at Bristol University.
In Boyhood (2014), the titular boy, played by Ellar Coltrane, attends Sul Ross State University at the end of the film.
Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) is set at a fictional southeast Texas university, but it may be based partially on Linklater’s own experience at Sam Houston State University.
President Marshall (Harrison Ford) of “Air Force One” is a Michigan grad.
Paul Newman’s character in Hitchcock’s Torn CUrtain is a physicist, a graduate of the f Caltech. I don’t remember where Julie Andrews,his fiancé in the film, went to college.
Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes graduated 95th in a class of 95 cadets from one of the Imperial German military academies*.
- The show never specified which one and there were several lower-level military academies and a few higher-level ones throughout the German Empire before they were closed down by the Allied Commission in 1920.