Going back a bit, but in Adam’s Rib (1949) attorney Amanda Bonner (Katherine Hepburn) is a graduate of Bryn Mawr (as Hepburn was in real life) and Yale Law School. Her husband Adam Bonner (Spencer Tracy) is also a lawyer. I don’t think his law school alma mater is ever named, but it’s implied that it’s a less prestigious law school as Adam accuses Amanda of holding her superior education over him.
In the original “Father of the Bride” and sequel, “Father’s Little Dividend”, Spencer Tracy’s character graduated from Dartmouth and the father of the groom attended Harvard.
@hokupaa “Whiplash” did indeed have a scene where Carleton was mentioned. The main character was at a family dinner and his cousin discussed playing football at Carleton. I’m still scratching my head over that reference.
Sondra Huxtable is a graduate of Princeton.
In The West Wing, President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet (Martin Sheen) went to Notre Dame despite acceptances at Harvard, Yale, and Williams. He then went on to earn a Ph.D. in economics at the London School of Economics and was on the faculty at Dartmouth before getting into politics. (This strikes me as somewhat improbable; I don’t think we’ve had a real academic as President since Woodrow Wilson).
First Lady Abbey Bartlet (Stockard Channing) earned her medical degree at Harvard Medical School, where she is also adjunct faculty.
Their daughter Zoey (Elizabeth Moss) graduates from Georgetown.
An older daughter, Ellie (Nina Siemaszko), graduated from Carnegie Mellon and gets her medical degree from Johns Hopkins
Chief of Staff and later Vice President-elect Leo McGarry (John Spencer) is a Michigan man.
Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford is an alum of Harvard College and Yale Law School.
Communications Director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) is an alum of CCNY.
Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) is an alum of Princeton and Duke Law School.
Press Secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) went to Williams as an undergrad and earned a Masters at UC Berkeley.
Josh’s assistant Donna Moss (Janel Moloney) dropped out of the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
The President’s “body man” Charlie Young (Dule Hill) attends Georgetown.
Bartlet’s successor as President, Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) is a graduate of the US Naval Academy. His vanquished opponent Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) is an alum of Yale College and Stanford Law School.
Steve McGarrett of H-5-O fame went to the fictional Army & Navy Academy in California.
Does anyone know where Top Gun’s LT Pete “Maverick” Mitchell would have graduated from before reporting to Fightertown USA, Miramar,CA? Naval Academy grad?
That’s a high school. For college, he graduated from USNA.
As mentioned in the movie, not USNA.
“Goose: I know the Academy rejected you because you’re Duke Mitchell’s kid and you have to live with that reputation.”
I would assume some college’s NROTC Program, but it’s not explicitly stated.
Meadow Soprano went to Columbia.
In one epi she went with her Tony to look at the Maine schools and at Bates she refused to get out of the car. But she did interview at Colby and Bowdoin.
In 1973 my parents took my sister to see the Maine schools and she also refused to get out of the car at Bates,
Matt Damon’s character in The Martian was a University of Chicago graduate.
^ So were Sally and Harry in When Sally Met Harry.
I was in grad school at the time and they were filming on campus and on the street were I lived.
Maverick as a Navy Lieutenant who was runner-up for top #1 of F-14 pilots on his carrier would have likely been commissioned sometime in the late '70s - early '80s(80-81 most likely).
The underlying personal political context of Maverick’s rejection is underscored when one understands that from the '70s to sometime in the mid-'80s, the Federal Service Academies weren’t very popular among many of the best/brightest graduates of the period due to how the national split over the Vietnam War meant many parents.
This included many Vietnam Vets themselves(Especially enlistees/conscripts) strongly discouraged consideration of the military as a career. Especially if their student was a contender for admission to elite colleges. .
Unlike before the '70s or after the late '80s, it was unusual for a topflight kid with elite u admission prospects to turn it down for a Federal Service Academy appointment like an older neighbor from my old NYC neighborhood did in the mid-'80s when he turned down full-FA admission to MIT for Annapolis.
Said older neighbor was regarded as having flipped by most HS classmates and his father who was very upset at him for his decision at the time. But hey…said older neighbor wanted to be a submarine officer and at the time, it was so highly competitive that he felt he’d have a much better chance of landing that assignment from USNA than from MIT’s NROTC. .
In contrast, a student doing the same from my graduating class in the mid-'90s onward or before the '70s wouldn’t have been considered unusual.
St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) all the characters went to Georgetown, but scenes were filmed at UMD.
John Belushi briefly attended UW-Whitewater (in Wisconsin), and some of the movie is allegedly based on his experiences there. Drunk students, in public and private, continue to be an issue at Whitewater, more so than at some state schools.
@cobrat, I don’t know where you get some of your information. The USAFA was very popular for my high school graduating class of 1976. It was the first year women were admitted. My brothers graduated from high schools in Maryland in the late 70’s, early 80’s and their classmates were thrilled to get into Annapolis. I went to college during that period and several friends were in ROTC at that liberal place, Boulder CO (it’s not as liberal as people think).
There has never been a time when the academies were hurting for applicants. Top students, athletes, future leaders.
Maddie from Parenthood went to Cornell (despite never attending class, studying for SATs or doing ECs that I could see) Her cousin went to Berkeley.
I recalled reading a couple of dead tree articles by a couple of older West Point alums(graduated in the '50s/'60s) written sometime in the early '90s bemoaning how the negative public perceptions in the wake of the Vietnam War was such that in the early '70s, applications fell so sharply that West Point had to admit nearly everyone who applied to ensure there were enough cadets to fill the incoming class.
Also, several older HS alums who graduated in the early '80s mentioned the classmates they knew who ended up attending the Service Academies tended to have stats which meant they were nowhere near the same league as classmates who were contenders for elite Ivy/peer elites or LACs…especially the SWAMP* colleges.
A key reason why when an older neighbor who graduated from my public magnet in the mid '80s turned down a full FA admission to MIT to attend USNA, his classmates thought he flipped and his father was extremely upset with him as they all felt the academic rep gap between the two was that wide.
In contrast, by the time I graduated from that very same HS nearly a decade later in the mid-'90s, the Service Academies were regarded as being equivalent to the Ivies/peer elite colleges.
- Swat, Williams, Amherst, Midd, Pomona.
okay Top Gun aficionados: What about Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood, played by Kelly McGillis? The flight instructor reportedly with a phD in Astrophysics who bore her way into Maverick’s heart by obsessing on the MiG-28?
The real life Christine Fox, call-name “Legs” is the woman behind the woman. Christine has a Masters in Applied Math from George Mason University, but no PhD. She is however a consultant in Applied Physics at JHU.
We’ll have to see where the new Top Gun movie identifies Charlie’s college degree.
Charles Emerson Winchester III MASH 4077th, Harvard Class of '43
Thurston Howell III (born 1922) went to Harvard. Likely a classmate of Charles Emerson Winchester III!
A correction-Season 1, Episode 5, “College”, opens with Meadow leaving her Bates interview and talking about all of Bates’ programs (study abroad, strong liberal arts, no need for SAT scores, etc.) then commenting on how pretty the Bates campus is.
Meadow gets drunk with a couple of Colby girls when Tony takes off in pursuit a snitch he’d spotted at a gas station. Tony kills the guy while Meadow’s at her Colby interview. They then proceed to Bowdoin.
^ maybe I was getting real life mixed up with fictional life!!