History Main / IvyLeagueForEveryOne

** "The Front" has a bit where it's revealed that most of the writers of ''WesternAnimation/ItchyAndScratchy'' went to Harvard (a bit of SelfDeprecation, as they're also [[WritersSuck universally shown to be hacks]]. When Roger Meyers Jr. throws his nameplate at one of them, the writer tries to shoot back with another one of these.

* This trope was deconstructed when [[https://www.npr.org/2020/09/30/914061484/lies-money-and-cheating-the-deeper-story-of-the-college-admissions-scandal#:~:text=Yet%20the%20recent%20nationwide%20scandal,system%20at%20select%20colleges%20nationwide. it came out in 2019 that numerous wealthy parents]], including Lori Loughlin of ''Series/FullHouse'' fame and Felicity Huffman, were going beyond donating buildings and pulling strings to get their kids into prestigious colleges. The scandal, called Operation Varsity Blues, revealed that the ringleader was a college counselor named Rick Singer that rigged test scores for the SAT and ACT, faked disabilities for extended time on tests, falsified "evidence" that they were athletes. In some cases, he even hired proctors to take exams for the kids. Some of the students themselves were embarrassed when the scandal came out, with only a few willing to tell their side of the story. Singer has been arrested but not sentenced owing to his willingness to cooperate with authorities, and universities have withdrawn or expelled a few of the kids involved. It turns out Ivy League means nothing when money can manipulate the system.

* This trope was deconstructed when [[https://www.npr.org/2020/09/30/914061484/lies-money-and-cheating-the-deeper-story-of-the-college-admissions-scandal#:~:text=Yet%20the%20recent%20nationwide%20scandal,system%20at%20select%20colleges%20nationwide. it came out in 2019 that numerous wealthy parents]], including Lori Loughlin of ''Series/FullHouse'' fame and Felicity Huffman, were going beyond donating buildings and pulling strings to get their kids into prestigious colleges. The scandal, called Operation Varsity Blues, revealed that the ringleader was a college counselor named Rick Singer that rigged test scores for the SAT and ACT, faked disabilities for extended time on tests, falsified "evidence" that they were athletes. In some cases, he even hired proctors to take exams for the kids. Some of the students themselves were embarrassed when the scandal came out, with only a few willing to tell their side of the story. Singer has been arrested but not sentenced owing to his willingness to cooperate with authorities, and universities have withdrawn or expelled a few of the kids involved. It turns out Ivy League means nothing when money can manipulate the system]].

* '''UsefulNotes/{{Canada}}''': Universities in Canada are far less stratified than in other countries, both because of the high government education funding and strict standards making them more homogeneous with each other and because the very great distances between urban centres usually mean a student will choose a university close to home, with few exceptions.[[note]]Canada completely lacks the American cultural norm of college students casually moving across the country just to go to a school they like; if a student travels to go to school, the expectation is that they plan to stay there to work after they graduate. It helps that "college towns" aren't really a thing in Canada; almost all universities are located in at least mid-sized cities.[[/note]] The "top tier" generally consists of the few universities to predate Confederation in 1867, particularly [=McGill=] in Montreal (1821), Queen's in Kingston (1841), and the University of Toronto in Toronto (1828). (Works set in Western Canada will usually sub in the University of British Columbia and, to a lesser extent, the University of Alberta.) However none of these stands out as a singular "Harvard of the North" or "Oxbridge" as in the US or UK. There are also universities which are basically mandatory if a student is studying a particular subject, most famously the University of Waterloo ("Geek Heaven North") for math or computer science, along with the University of Guelph for agriculture or veterinary school. If you're studying law or engineering or medicine, you'll want to go to a school in the aforementioned top tier, which is one of the rare occasions Canadian students will travel just to go to school (U of T and [=McGill=] are both in highly-populated metro areas, but the metro area served by Queen's has barely 150,000 people.) Canadian students who can afford the comparatively exorbitant tuition fees and who are willing to do the extra work to get admitted will attend American (or to a lesser extent British) universities as well.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife'', where all the named scientists we know of came from Ivy League schools. Justified in that a place like Black Mesa would be on the lookout for people with such outstanding qualifications.

* ''WebComic/DumbingOfAge'': Dorothy aspires to be admitted to Yale and leave Indiana University. %% To be added 15 Nov: [[spoiler: She receives an acceptance letter from Yale's undergraduate equivalent about the time second semester begins, though her hastily covering it up shows something had changed about her aspirations.]]

* ''WebComic/DumbingOfAge'': Dorothy aspires to be admitted to Yale and leave Indiana University. %% To be added 14 Nov: [[spoiler: She receives an acceptance letter from Yale's undergraduate equivalent about the time second semester begins, though her hastily covering it up shows something had changed about her aspirations.]]

** The 2020 Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is the first of either party since 1984 to not have an Ivy League alumni.

* If we're counting law schools, the US Supreme Court's made up entirely of Harvard and Yale alums, with the half-exception of [[Film/{{RBG}} Ruth Bader]] [[Film/OnTheBasisOfSex Ginsburg]]. She started law school at Harvard, but transferred to Columbia when her husband took a job in New York City. Both of Obama's nominees -- Sotomayor and Kagan -- got their bachelors' at Princeton. Obama himself went to Harvard Law School and was the first black President of the Harvard Law Review. And the latter part of his undergraduate career was spent at Columbia - however, for the first couple of years he studied at Occidental College which... is ''not'' an Ivy League school. Trump's first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, also got his bachelor's at Columbia and JD at Harvard—though unlike Obama, he did all of his undergrad work at Columbia. Trump's second nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, earned both his bachelor's and JD at Yale.
* Justice Thomas has a strained relationship with Yale Law School, his alma mater.[[note]]Thomas is only a law school Ivy man. He earned his bachelor's at Holy Cross, making him the only current justice who didn't attend an Ivy or the equivalent as an undergrad. The only other non-Ivy undergraduate on the current court, Stephen Breyer, went to Stanford.[[/note]] In 2013, he cracked a joke at their expense during oral arguments. It was the first thing he said in oral arguments ''for seven years.''

** Creator/JodieFoster went to Yale

** Though not an Ivy League school, Creator/FrankCapra went to Caltech.

* 31% of American Presidents attended Ivy League schools, and as you go further down the Federal hierarchy the numbers actually increase slightly. Although this is justified in that people who tend to become Presidents also tend to have Important Connections. Ditto for corporate executives, especially in companies based on the East Coast.

** Though not an Ivy League school, Creator/FrankCapra went to Caltech, one of the leading, elite science and tech schools in US next to MIT.

** Creator/JodieFoster to Yale

** Creator/NataliePortman was attending Harvard during most of the filming for the ''Franchise/StarWars'' prequels, under her real name. She actually advised Creator/AaronSorkin about Harvard social life when he was writing ''Film/TheSocialNetwork'' and the movie has a shout out to her attending.

* Creator/MasiOka graduated Brown in '97.

* [[IvyLeagueForEveryone/LiveActionFilms Film -- Live-Action]]

* The Juilliard School, a prestigious arts school in [[BigApplesauce New York City]] with programs in music, theater and dance. If your TeenDrama includes an amazing classical musician or the star of the school musical, they will always go here, even though the latter is impossible in reality since Juilliard, interestingly enough, does not actually have a musical theater program.

* '''UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}}''': National Taiwan University, National Chinghua University, National Jiaotung University, National Chunggung University

* '''UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}}''': National Taiwan University

** Speaking of Otto, throwaway gag in "Team Homer" has him playing a "prize-crane" arcade machine, with one of the prizes inside being a Harvard diploma. (This was partially a joke on how Mike Scully, the episode's writer, was one of the few writers on staff who didn't go to Harvard.)

* In shows about wealthy African Americans, someone WILL have attended one of the "Black Ivy League" schools, the most prestigious historically black colleges in the US. The most oft-mentioned are Howard, the coordinate colleges of Morehouse (all-male) and Spelman (all-female), and Tuskegee.

* For soldiers or former soldiers, West Point, the Naval Academy, or the Air Force Academy, depending on branch of service. To be fair, there are precisely 11 military colleges (as opposed to colleges that offer ROTC programs) in the US, and outside of accelerated recruitment and training in wartime, most officers do come from the federal military college for their chosen branch of the military.

* In shows about wealthy African Americans, someone WILL have attended one of the "Black Ivy League" schools, the most prestigious historically black colleges in the US. The most oft-mentioned are Howard, the coordinate colleges of Morehouse (all-male) and Spelman (all-female), and Tuskegee. As none of these schools are actually [[https://www.forbes.com/colleges/howard-university/#4a2c5a0b1888 particularly great]] by American standards (above-average, but far off from the top tier), it is more common to see these alma maters on older African American characters (with the implicit understanding that they grew up in an era where few African Americans went to college and those that did had to deal with racially biased admission standards at white-majority institutions); a younger African American character who wants to prove their chops will likely instead have gone to an Ivy League, a Public Ivy, etc.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
%% this section has been alphabetized
* In ''Film/TwentyOne'', MIT senior math major Ben Campbell is accepted into Harvard Medical School but cannot afford the $300,000 cost. Even though he has a high 44 MCAT score and a 4.0 GPA, Ben faces heavy competition for the prestigious Robinson Scholarship, which would give him a full ride through medical school. He uses the story of the film to impress Harvard officers and to stand out from the other well-qualified applicants. The film is based on the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Blackjack_Team MIT Blackjack Team]], who were from MIT and Harvard.
* Averted in ''Film/{{Accepted}}'', where it's a plot point that one of the main characters emphatically did ''not'' get into Yale. She expected to be a shoo-in and hadn't applied anywhere else. However, another student from the same high school as the protagonists ''did'' get into Princeton.
* ''Franchise/IndianaJones'' has an undergraduate degree in linguistics and a [=Ph.D=] in archaeology from the University of Chicago. He also teaches at Yale.
* In ''Film/AcrossTheUniverse'', Jude befriends Max Carrigan, a rebellious student at Princeton. Max and his friends' upper class and wealthy families pay for their schooling while they spend their time drinking, smoking marijuana, and pulling pranks. Max's attendance at Princeton allows him to avoid [[{{Conscription}} the draft]] of UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar. When he drops out though...
* Patrick Bateman of ''Film/AmericanPsycho'' went to Harvard University and Harvard Business School. It's also mentioned that Paul Owen went to Yale.
* Linda and Andrew are Brown alumni in the movie ''Film/AngerManagement''. Jack Nicholson's character Dr. Buddy Rydell went to Columbia University.
* Natalie Ann August, played by Creator/NataliePortman in ''Anywhere But Here'' applies and is accepted by Brown, despite the dismay of her mother, played by Susan Sarandon, over the distance.
* In ''{{Film/Armageddon}}'', Rockhound, the team's InsufferableGenius, mentions that he has a double-docterate from MIT and also taught at Princeton for two and a half years.
* The psychiatrist of Creator/JackNicholson's Melvin Udall mentions her son was accepted into Brown in ''Film/AsGoodAsItGets''.
* In ''Film/BatmanBegins'', Alfred casually asks Bruce Wayne if he plans to return to Princeton after the trial of his parents' murderer. Bruce tells him that he won't, adding that "I like it fine. They just don't feel the same way." He drops out and goes to China instead.
* In the Coen Brothers' ''Film/BurnAfterReading'', Osborne Cox, played by John Malkovich, is a CIA analyst and Princeton class of 1973 graduate. In a scene at a fictional Princeton Club, he leads a fast-tempo rendition of Princeton's anthem, Old Nassau.
* In ''Film/{{Booksmart}}'' it's PlayedForLaughs and kicks off the plot. Molly and Amy spent all of their free time in high school studying to ensure they'd go to Ivy League colleges and are enrolled at Yale and Columbia, respectively at the start. But then when Molly boasts of this to some classmates who were mocking her AcademicAlphaBitch attitude, she discovers that they and several others managed to get into good colleges as well (except one guy who's skipping college entirely to work at Google). This causes her to believe the two of them missed out on partying for nothing.
-->'''"Triple A":''' I'm incredible at hand jobs, but I also got a 1560 on the [=SATs=].
* In ''Film/CantHardlyWait'', Preston plans to attend Dartmouth, William will be attending Harvard and though it's not Ivy League, NYU is still pretty prestigious, and Denise manages to get in with no extracurricular activities at all.
* In the movie ''Film/ACinderellaStory'', a major part of the storyline revolves around Sam and Austin's goal of getting into Princeton and studying writing. Of course, [[HappilyEverAfter they get in]].
* In ''Film/CitizenKane'', the eponymous character is said to have attended and been thrown out of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell.
* At the end of ''Coming Soon'', Tricia Vessey's character, Nell Kellner, gets accepted to Brown University when she reveals that her father had donated a large sum of money to the school.
* In ''Film/DeadPoetsSociety'', Mr. Nolan mentions that 75% of the previous year's graduates went to The Ivy Leagues. Pitts says he might go to Yale (but he might not). And Neil's father intends him to go to Harvard.
* ''Film/DirtyDancing'' : Mr. Kellerman, when he's giving the "show the daughters a good time" speech to the wait staff, says he recruited them all from Harvard and Yale. Robbie the Jerkass waiter goes to Yale Medical School. Neil (Mr. Kellerman's grandson) goes to Cornell School of Restaurant Management. Baby will be attending Mount Holyoke. And when she gives Jake her speech at the end, she says that he thinks saving the world means marrying someone from Harvard.
* ''The Education of Charlie Banks'' takes place at Brown University.
* Averted in ''Film/{{Election}}''. In just about any other movie, a character as intelligent and ambitious as Tracy Flick would be trying to get into an Ivy League school, but her goal is Georgetown because of its very strong political science program and access to government internships. It also subverts the usual standards of this trope in that when Tracy actually gets to Georgetown, she discovers that far from being an intellectual utopia, she ''still'' doesn't have much in common with her less ambitious classmates. Fortunately, the academic programs are still every bit as strong as she thought.
* Creator/TomCruise's character Mitch [=McDeere=] in ''Film/TheFirm'' is a recent Harvard Law graduate hired by Memphis law firm that [[spoiler:represents organized crime.]]
* The three original ''Film/{{Ghostbusters|1984}}'' are faculty at Columbia University, until their unorthodox research focus and lack of results leads to them being let go. Ray even notes their reputation will preclude them from getting grants at MIT or Stanford.
* In ''Film/{{The Girl Next Door|2004}}'', Eli Brooks is mentioned as having been accepted to Princeton.
* In ''Film/TheGodfather'', main character Michael Corleone, wishing to avoid the [[TheMafia family]] [[FamilyBusiness business]], attends Dartmouth College. He later re-enrolls at Dartmouth after fighting in the Pacific Theatre of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, where he meets his future wife, Kay Adams.
* In ''Hamlet 2'', the main character, a drama teacher, assumes a Latino student is a gangster. In actuality, the student had gained early admission to Brown.
* Alan Jensen, played by Adrian Grenier, is the point guard of the Harvard basketball team in ''Harvard Man''.
* ''Film/HighSchoolMusical'': Gabriella goes to Stanford, Troy to Berkley and Taylor to Yale. Gabriella is a TeenGenius, while Troy and Taylor are less talented. Two characters go to Juilliard on a ''musical theater'' scholarship, despite the fact that Juilliard has no musical theater programs, but one goes for dance and the other goes for music. Kelsi, one of the scholarship recipients, goes there for composition, despite the fact that in RealLife, Juilliard's composition program is focused on classical music, not musicals.
* In the [[StonerFlick stoner film]] ''Film/HowHigh'', two underachieving pot smokers, Silas (Method Man) and Jamal (Redman), use a magic weed to get perfect scores on their THC exams (Testing for Higher Credentials, as opposed to SAT) and to receive admission into Harvard University.
* In ''Film/IndependenceDay'', David Levinson is berated by his father, and later his ex-wife, for having spent eight years at MIT and deciding to work as a cable repairman.
* Meg Ryan's character, Catherine Boyd, is a mathematics doctoral candidate at Princeton University in the RomanticComedy ''I.Q.''
* In ''Film/JackRyanShadowRecruit'', the titular character is shown attending the London School of Economics when the September 11 attacks occur.
* The eponymous character of the film ''Film/KissingJessicaStein'' graduated from Brown.
* In ''Film/TheLastOfTheMohicans'', Hawkeye says he attended Reverend Wheelock's school. This is presumably Dartmouth College, originally founded as a school to train Native Americans as missionaries.
* In ''Film/{{Leatherheads}}'', Carter Rutherford, played by John Krasinski, is a star Princeton quarterback.
* The entire story of ''Film/LegallyBlonde'' is about [[DumbBlonde a blonde's]] quest to get into and be successful at Harvard Law School. With a 4.00 GPA, a 179 LSAT,[[note]]out of 180[[/note]] and being the president of a sorority, however, Elle's admission to Harvard Law School was one of the most accurate parts of the movie.
-->'''Warner''': ''You'' got into Harvard Law?\\
'''Elle''': What, like it's hard?
* The 1970 film ''Film/LoveStory'', written by Harvard alumnus Erich Segal, is a romantic drama about a rich Harvard pre-law, hockey player, played by Ryan O'Neal,[[note]]a character whom Segal later admitted was modeled after his Harvard contemporaries UsefulNotes/AlGore and Creator/TommyLeeJones[[/note]] and a brilliant Radcliffe musicology scholarship student, played by Ali [=MacGraw=]. Segal also taught Greek and Latin literature at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
** The Crimson Key Society, since the late 1970s, screens two movies, including this one, to incoming Harvard freshmen during their orientations. The movie [[AudienceParticipation gets mocked and ridiculed]] for its [[SoBadItsGood cheesy, hokey elements]]. The other movie screened? ''Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow''.
* In ''Film/MarsAttacks'', President James Dale, played by Jack Nicholson, is an alumnus of Princeton University.
* ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'', the universe where not a single non-Ivy-equivalent exists:
** In ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', Gabe Jones mentions taking three semesters of German at Howard University.
** In ''Film/IronMan'', Tony Stark asks Christine Everhart, a Vanity Fair columnist who questions him about his weapons industry and accuses his company of killing people, if she attended [[StrawmanU Berkeley]]. She tells him she actually attended Brown.
** In ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk'', Bruce and Betty are mentioned to have met each other at Harvard University. Bruce also claims to (somehow) have 7 [=PhDs=]. [[OmnidisciplinaryScientist Apparently including, at the very least, radiobiology, astrophysics, and computer science...]][[note]]His work on the titular SuperSoldier project in ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk'' was because he was apparently an expert in radiobiology. ''Film/TheAvengers2012'' explicitly has Maria Hill calling him an expert on "thermonuclear astrophysics." ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron'' has him and Stark creating a sapient artificial intelligence.[[/note]]
** In ''Film/IronMan2'', Tony Stark and Rhodey are both seen wearing the "Brass Rat", the class ring given to MIT grads; which would mean both of them attended. It's mentioned that Tony Stark graduated from MIT ''summa cum laude'' at the age of 17. Though MIT doesn't give class rankings or cum laude awards. In ''Film/CaptainAmericaCivilWar'', Stark is seen giving a speech and starting a scholarship at his alma mater. A FreezeFrameBonus shot of [[http://i.4cdn.org/tv/1541034190448.png his S.H.I.E.L.D dossier]] shows that he started attending in 1984 and graduated with a B.S. in Engineering in 1987. Yes, he got into MIT at age 14.
** In ''Film/BlackPanther2018'', Ross mentions that Erike Stevens/"Killmonger" graduated from the highly prestigious United States Naval Academy at Annapolis at the age of 19 ([[ArtisticLicenseUniversityAdmissions even though]] [[ArtisticLicenseMilitary that's impossible]]), before going to graduate school at MIT, though we don't know his major. This one's particularly egregious because, while his career and skills can be said to be pretty consistent with those of an Annapolis graduate (military tactics, foreign languages, psychology, and basic military engineering being part of the general curriculum for all majors), he never displays any skills or traits that would suggesting he holds a master's degree or a doctorate in any sort of theoretical or applied science (quite the opposite, he makes rookie mistakes like calling a directed energy explosive launcher "a sonic cannon"), as would be suggested from MIT grad school. This part of the character is limited to a single line in an InfoDump.
** ''Series/Daredevil2015'': Matt/Daredevil attended Columbia Law School, one of the top law schools in the USA. So did Foggy.
** Bill Foster, the main antagonist of ''Film/AntManAndTheWasp'', is a professor at UC Berkeley.
* In ''Film/MeanGirls'', Aaron Samuels is pretty bad at calculus and seems like a kind jock, but otherwise shows no above-average skills or any particular studiousness. He's a swimmer, which is not a sport which generates much revenue for colleges and therefore provides little advantage when seeking admission. He gets admitted to the very prestigious Northwestern University after his senior year, despite being from the town where its campus is located. For those not in the know, admission to a highly-ranked college is usually toughest for nearby students since a disproportionate number of them prefer it, either due to exposure at a young age, a desire to stay near family, or the appeal of going to college with their friends. However, the university usually admits very few locals in order to recruit a geographically diverse student body. This usually leads to extremely qualified students getting passed over, rather than a case like Aaron's.
* The main characters of ''My Best Friend's Wedding'', played by Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulroney, became friends and made their marriage pact when they were students at Brown.
* In ''Film/MyCousinVinny'', Judge Haller's diploma from Harvard Law School is prominently displayed in his chambers when interviewing Vinny, who's licensed in New York, to determine if he's qualified to take on this case in Alabama. This contrasts with Vinny's degree from some tiny school that sounds a bit fly-by-night.
* Norah tells Nick in ''Film/NickAndNorahsInfinitePlaylist'' that she was accepted into Brown University.
* The three main leads of ''Film/NinjaCheerleaders'', Courtney, April and Monica gets accepted to Brown and attends the school at the end of the movie.
* Actively defied in ''Film/NotAnotherTeenMovie'' when Jake asks his dad to stop pushing him to go to Princeton. It's at a point where his dad has various Princeton artifacts such as banners and pillows all over his room and even pasted Jake's head over his own Princeton grad photo.
* In ''Film/OrangeCounty'', Shaun fights like hell to get into Stanford, [[spoiler:but ultimately decides to stay near his home and go to the local state college, which he considers a big step down]]. This, naturally, ignores the fact that Los Angeles is home to several world-class universities of its own, including USC and UCLA.
* Jane Weston, played by Amy Smart, gets accepted to Brown University and attends the school at the end of ''Outside Providence''.
* The [[TheFilmOfTheBook 1973 film version]] of ''The Paper Chase'' is an extremely faithful adaptation of the novel, telling the story of Hart's first year at Harvard Law School, and his experiences with Professor Charles Kingsfield, the brilliant, demanding contracts instructor whom he both idolizes and finds incredibly intimidating.
* In ''Film/ThePeacemaker'', Col. Devoe and his commandos are interrogating a bomb-maker who is currently hanging off a bridge.
-->'''Devoe:''' Do you speaking English?\\
'''Bomb-maker:''' I went to Harvard! Gooooooo Crimson!
* In ''[[Film/ThePrincessDiaries Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement]]'', Princess Mia is referred to as a graduate of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
* Brittany Snow's character, Donna Keppel, protagonist of the 2008 remake of ''[[Film/PromNight2008 Prom Night]],'' was accepted to Brown, but has doubts about leaving her boyfriend behind.
* Happens at the end of ''Film/RiskyBusiness''. In this case, though, not because the main character Joel Goodson is smart but because [[spoiler: the Princeton admissions officer finds the ability to throw massive pimp parties to be a trait worthy of Princeton]].
* Played with in ''Film/TheShawshankRedemption'': When helping one of the guards set up a trust fund, Andy Dufresne asks the guard if he wants his kids to go to Harvard or Yale. The guard recognizes it as a good-natured joke, and bonds with the inmate.
* In ''Film/ShesAllThat'', Zach has been accepted to Dartmouth, Yale and Harvard.
* The 1986 comedy ''Soul Man'' is about a man who undergoes racial transformation with pills so that he can qualify for an African-American-only scholarship at Harvard Law School.
* In ''[=Spanglish=]'', Cristina Moreno applies to Princeton University in the beginning of the film, telling the story of her childhood in her college essay.
* During a brief exchange in ''Film/{{Sphere}}'', it's revealed that three of the main characters received their doctorates at M.I.T., and at early ages to boot.
* Peter Parker is a student at Columbia University in ''Film/SpiderMan2''.
* ''Film/StarshipTroopers'':
** Johnny Rico is told by his father that he's going to go to Harvard. Since Johnny is repeatedly shown to be a dim bulb, it would appear that the trope name has come true. Possibly Justified in that Johnny's family is wealthy and presumably could buy him in, and that in the fascist Federation, liberal arts degrees from Harvard wouldn't carry the same status.
** Another one of the recruits mentions he got into Harvard and joined the Mobile Infantry so he can afford it.
* In ''Film/StayAlive'', the lead female character, Abigail, tells her friends that she got into Princeton, but later admits that she lied.
* Main character John resorts to crime in order to pay for his niece's Harvard education in ''Film/StealingHarvard''. John made a videotape many years ago, on which he promised to pay for Noreen's college tuition if she worked hard and was accepted into a university.
* Nora Clark in ''Film/StepUp'' has been accepted to Brown University, but wants to pursue her passion for dancing instead.
* Ana, Maggie Gyllenhaal's "anarchist baker" character in ''Film/StrangerThanFiction'' discovered her baking talent while a student at Harvard Law School.
* Lucy Whitman, the [[TheSmartGuy brains]] of the operation in teen comedy/[[TheCaper heist]] film ''[[Film/SugarAndSpice Sugar & Spice]]'' aspires of going to Harvard.
* Evan and Fogell of ''Film/{{Superbad}}'' are about to start college at Dartmouth College.
* In ''Film/TheTalentedMrRipley'', Dickie Greenleaf, played by Jude Law, is a graduate of Princeton. Title character Tom Ripley pretends he is a Princeton alumnus.
* In ''Film/TheresSomethingAboutMary'', Cameron Diaz's Mary attended Princeton University. Her ex-boyfriend "Woogie" also received a scholarship from Princeton.
* The title character of ''Film/TheThomasCrownAffair1968'' attended Dartmouth.
* In ''[[Film/TimeCop Timecop]]'', BigBad U.S. Senator [=McComb=] describes himself as an "ambitious, Harvard-educated visionary who deserves to be the most powerful man in the world."
* Bill Wentz, U.S. Navy radioman in the film ''[[Film/{{U571}} U-571]]'', studied German at Brown.
* In ''Film/{{UHF}}'', Pamela Finklestein tells somebody on the phone that she thinks Stanley Spawdoski, the dim-witted janitor, went to Harvard.
* In the film version of ''Film/UpInTheAir'', Natalie is a Cornell graduate.
* Jonathan "Mox" Moxon, played by James Van Der Beek, the main character of ''Film/VarsityBlues'', receives acceptance to Brown. His coach blackmails him to play football by threatening to ruin his transcript.
* Nick Mercer, the male escort hired by Kat Ellis to be her date to her sister's wedding in ''The Wedding Date'', graduated from Brown with a degree in Comparative Literature.
* In ''Where the Boys Are'', Merritt's love interest Ryder Smith is a student at Brown University. Melanie is also involved with a boy from Yale.
* The protagonist of ''Film/WithHonors'', Montgomery 'Monty' Kessler, as played by Brendan Fraser, is a smart but cynical young man who got into Harvard without any money ties. He is set to graduate as a government student [[TitleDrop with honors]] if he can put the finishing touches on his senior thesis.
* Referenced in ''Film/{{Heathers}}'': Veronica says she's going to have to send her SAT scores to San Quentin, instead of Stanford.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/TwoBrokeGirls''' Caroline Channing went to Wharton Business School (University of Pennsylvania).
* The Princeton episode of ''Series/EightSimpleRules'' embodied this trope. Bridget was the brainless one on the show ("Ivory League"), but to her family, all that stood between her and a full-ride athletic scholarship to Princeton was her being ineligible to play in the tennis match the scout was attending (the actual D grade itself that made her ineligible didn't concern them). The worst part was that her sister, a good student, was interested in Ivy League schools, yet never noticed that Bridget couldn't "just swing her tennis racket" and get into Princeton, since Princeton (and Ivy League schools in general) do not offer "athletic scholarships" and admittance solely on athletic ability.[[note]]While the Ivy League does allow each member school to admit a limited number of students based on athletic ability, those students are required to have academic credentials that are at least reasonably close to those of the general student body.[[/note]]
* ''Series/TwentyFour'':
** Bill Buchanan obtained his English degree from Brown University.
** President Charles Logan graduated from Princeton University.
** Audrey Raines, Jack Bauer's lover and Inter-Agency Liaison in the U.S. Department of Defense, has a degree in public policy from Brown.
** Bauer himself has a B.S. from Berkeley and an M.S. from UCLA.
* ''Series/ThirtyRock'''s Jack Donaghy attended Princeton University as an undergraduate. This is once used for comedic effect when Jack tells Kenneth he doesn't have bedbugs because he went to Princeton.
** Also, Twofer attended Harvard. (As did many a television comedy writer in RealLife.)
* Spoofed in a quiz on ''Series/TheAndyMilonakisShow''. Before one commercial break, Andy says "Believe it or not, Andy has a diploma at Harvard Law. Find out the answer when we return!" But after the commercial break, "if you guessed that Andy has a diploma from Harvard Law, you are [[spoiler:wrong.]]
* The title character of ''Series/AllyMcBeal'' attended Harvard Law School.
* General Michael Holden and Claudia Joy of ''Series/ArmyWives'' met while they were students at Harvard.
* The title character of ''Series/{{Becker}}'' likes to boast that he got his degree from Harvard - which actually means that somewhere, sometime, something went horribly wrong for him.
* In ''Series/TheBeverlyHillbillies'', Mrs. Drysdale's son Sonny mentions attending Princeton and Harvard and Yale. Pennants of the schools hang on his wall.
* On ''Series/{{Blackish}}'', Bow attended Brown University and Dre went to Howard University. Zoey subverts this and ends up going to a fictional CaliforniaUniversity. Junior plays it straight at first and gets into Howard, however he decides to take a gap year before going.
* ''Series/BlueBloods''' Jamie Reagan graduated from Harvard Law School, then decided to turn cop after his brother Joe was killed in the line of duty. Deconstructed in one episode, where he moonlights as a house painter because he's having trouble keeping up his student loan payments on a beat cop's salary. His sister Erin attended Columbia University and her daughter Nicky has followed suit.
* In ''Series/{{Bones}}'', Dr. Saroyan gets her adopted daughter into Columbia behind her back when said daughter decides to follow her boyfriend to a tiny college in Maine.
* On ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'', a major plot line in the show's fifth season is that Topanga is accepted to Yale, which would inevitably separate her from her OneTrueLove Cory, who was only accepted to the fictional Pennbrook in their native Philadelphia. They discuss the possibility of a LongDistanceRelationship but Topanga decides not to go to Yale after all and instead proposes marriage to Cory, with the two of them attending Pennbrook together starting in the sixth season.
** We later learn that Rachel made the ''exact same decision'' Topanga did - turning down Yale to attend Pennbrook with her boyfriend - which backfired on her when he dumped her and dropped out to move to Corpus Christi, Texas. (Both of them turn out okay, though - Topanga moves to New York City to accept an internship with a prestigious law firm and Rachel joins the Peace Corps after she graduates.)
* In ''Series/BreakingBad'', Walter White and his friend and former business partner Elliot Schwartz were Caltech students.
* Justified in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' with Willow's acceptance into Harvard, Yale, Oxford, etc., as she is consistently portrayed as [[HollywoodNerd intelligent]]. In the end, she remains in town and settles for [[CaliforniaUniversity UC Sunnydale]] to help Buffy in her [[ForGreatJustice fight against evil]].
** Subverted when Willow is wooed by Wesleyan University. While a great school, it's not an Ivy -- it's merely Joss Whedon's ''alma mater''.
** Cordelia gets accepted into several of the schools on this list, despite being the AlphaBitch and TheCheerleader, because she does well on standardized testing. She tells Wesley in ''Series/{{Angel}}'' that she was in the top 10% of her class. Cordelia is also reasonably intelligent despite being forthright and taking care to hide her studious side.
** Buffy herself got into Northwestern, every bit as prestigious as many of the schools here.
*** Which is probably the most ridiculous part since Buffy was characterized as cutting a lot of class in high school and doing poorly as a result.
* In ''Series/CharlesInCharge'', the main character gets accepted as a graduate student to Princeton.
* ''{{Series/Charmed|1998}}'' subverts the trope when Phoebe is attending college in seasons 2 and 3 (and later goes back in season 7). The name of her college is not mentioned. The show being set in San Francisco, the only time Berkeley is actually mentioned is when Phoebe's asking for fake directions. Given that she's implied to be a bit of a delinquent when she was a teenager, Phoebe would probably need a bit of magic to get into an Ivy League school.
* Series/{{Chuck}} was thrown out of Stanford for cheating [[spoiler: not really, and he got his degree eventually]]. Vivian Macarthur [[spoiler: Volkoff]] was groomed to take over her father's [[spoiler: villainous]] organisation after studying at the London School of Economics.
* Dartmouth College is the alma mater of the [[AlterEgoActing fictional host]] of ''Series/TheColbertReport''; the real Colbert graduated from Northwestern University.
* In ''Series/CommanderInChief'', former Communications Directors and current Press Secretary Kelly Ludlow, played by Ever Carradine, graduated from Princeton.
** In one episode, a family uncovered a ''film'' (e.g., undeniable proof) of the Speaker of the House ranting against minorities. They offer it to President Allen in exchange for an acceptance to Brown University for one of their children (it is implied the child was not able to attend an Ivy League school without it). President Allen is able to secure an acceptance for them, then destroys the film, realizing that, while it would have been a major chip to hold over the [=SotH=], he did not espouse these ideals and was only making a (badly influenced) political speech for a specific audience.
* In ''Series/{{Community}}'', Jeff Winger goes to Greendale Community College after the State Bar found out that his bachelor's degree from Col''u''mbia was actually from Col''o''mbia.
* On ''Series/TheCosbyShow'', eldest daughter Sondra Huxtable attended Princeton, and she met her future husband Elvin Tibideaux there. Brother Theo attends NYU (not Ivy, but a well-known and excellent school in its own right). Cliff and Clair themselves are alums of the (fictional) historically black college Hillman College, based largely on the RealLife Howard University (the "Harvard" of historically black colleges). Their daughter Denise briefly attends the school (which becomes the initial premise of the SpinOff ''Series/ADifferentWorld''), but dropped out as a result of RealLifeWritesThePlot (actress Lisa Bonet became pregnant).
* ''Series/CriminalMinds'': Special Agent Emily Prentiss went to Brown, as is revealed in her first episode. Justified in-universe as she's not only extremely intelligent (speaking several languages) but the daughter of a US Ambassador.
** Spencer Reid is said to have multiple degrees, bachelors and doctorates, from MIT, Caltech AND Yale. Garcia went to Caltech, and fans happily debate whether they would have attended at the same time.
* ''Series/Daredevil2015'': Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson and Marci Stahl all attended Columbia Law School. Matt and Foggy bow out of well-paying jobs at Landman & Zack to start their own firm in Hell's Kitchen. Marci stays at L&Z until most of the firm's partners are implicated in Wilson Fisk's criminal activities, and subsequently she moves over to Hogarth Chao & Benowitz, where Foggy joins her at the end of season 2.
* Sam Arsenault, guest villain on ''{{Series/Damages}}'', sings Danny Boy at a cocktail party and tells the guests he sang it with the Jabberwocks when he was an undergraduate student at Brown. The actor, James Naughton, was a member of the Jabberwocks and graduated from Brown in 1967 in RealLife.
* Later seasons of ''{{Series/Degrassi}}'' have turned into this, despite [[ShapedLikeItself most Canadian students preferring Canadian universities]] if only because of lower tuition costs or not having to take the UsefulNotes/SATs to get acceptance to Canadian universities. Danny goes to Cornell (despite the fact that he didn't actually start doing well in school until Grade 12). Holly J. attends Yale. Clare is applying to Columbia.
** While not Ivy League, a number of characters have been accepted to prestigious American schools. Later seasons have included Alli getting early acceptance to MIT, Jane and Katie both attending Stanford (despite Katie royally screwing up her senior year by leaving to attend rehab midway through it), and Eli headed for NYU.
** Paige, Liberty, and Damian get accepted to fictional Banting, "the Harvard of the North". Justified with the latter two, as they tied for valedictorian and were student body presidents of their respective schools.
* In the season 4 finale of ''Series/DesperateHousewives'', Susan's daughter Julie Mayer is accepted to Princeton and prepares to leave home.
** Bree's daughter Danielle ends up at Columbia even though the show stressed her stupidity for years.
* On ''Series/DoogieHowserMD'', main character Douglas Howser, boy genius, graduated from Princeton at the young age of 10.
* On ''Series/{{Eureka}}'', Zoe goes off to Harvard at the end of the third season.
** Nearly every character aside from Sheriff Carter and Jo have a degree from the Ivy League or UsefulNotes/{{Oxbridge}}, but this is actually Justified given the premise.
* In ''Series/EvenStevens'', Louis and Ren's mother, Eileen Stevens, is an alumnus of Brown University.
* In ''Series/{{Everwood}}'', Amy Abbott is accepted to Princeton. She chooses to defer her first semester at Princeton so that she can take care of her mother while she recovers from her cancer.
* In ''Series/FamilyMatters'', Laura Winslow is accepted to Harvard but ends up attending the cheaper local college [[CaliforniaUniversity Illinois Occidental University (IOU)]].
* In ''Series/FamilyTies'', Alex P. Keaton spends the first two seasons preparing to attend Princeton. While visiting for an on-campus interview, his sister Mallory has an emotional crisis. Ultimately, Alex chooses to tend to her rather than complete his interview, thus destroying his chance of attending Princeton.
** To compensate, the show created a fictitious university that looked suspiciously like Stanford in Ohio, complete with a tree mascot!
* Dr. Frasier Crane of ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' and ''Series/{{Cheers}}'' earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard College. He also graduated from Harvard Medical School, where he obtained both his M.D. and Ph.D. in psychiatry. It's stated on the show that he also attended Oxford.
** And Niles went to Yale and Cambridge.
* In ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'', Carlton Banks' dream school is Princeton University and he eventually attends the university at the end of the series. His father, Phillip, attended Princeton on scholarship, and went to Harvard Law School afterwards.
** There's at least one Mention of Carlton wishing to attend Yale. Princeton only becomes his goal/dream after Philip informs him that's where he's going.
** Also, it's worth mentioning that unlike most fictional characters, Carlton's aspirations aren't unrealistic. Between him being a legacy child (it's easier for children of alumni to get in, and Phil is a Princeton grad), his family being wealthy and well-connected, both in their community and in academia (Phil is a high-powered attorney and, later, judge, Vivian is a professor), and Carlton being shown to obsessively maintain a 4.0 GPA, his prospects for admittance are very good.
** In one episode, Uncle Phil mentions that in addition to Princeton, he received scholarships to two other Ivies: Yale and Wharton (the latter a part of the University of Pennsylvania). This is consistent with his backstory as having grown up in poverty, so he would not have been able to afford any of these schools had they not provided him with needs-based scholarships, which they do offer in RealLife. Another character (who attended Penn State) snidely remarks that he must have been an athlete in his [[YouAreFat thinner]] days, but as noted none of the Ivies even offer athletic scholarships. Uncle Phil was admitted based on his excellent scholastic record and could afford it based on his financial need.
* ''Series/FridayNightLights'' subverts this. Getting a scholarship for any college is what most of the players aspire for in order to get ahead in life. Schools from all over the country will offer players a spot on their team and Ivy League schools don't offer sports scholarships. Julie and Landry, both portrayed as hard working students and smart, don't go to Ivy League schools (Julie attends the fictional Burleson College while Landry attends Rice University).
* ''Series/GarthMarenghisDarkplace'': one of the earliest signs of CriticalResearchFailure in the ShowWithinAShow of the same name is Liz Asher claimed to have gone to 'Harvard College, Yale'. Which is two separate locations. And it's unlikely (though not technically impossible) that the British Liz would have gone to America for higher learning. But considering KnowNothingKnowItAll Garth Marenghi wrote/directed/starred in the script, he probably threw that in to make Liz sound qualified and smart. Not that Garth's ego and misogyny would let him write Liz ''using'' those smarts and overshadowing [[AuthorAvatar Dr. Rick Dagless, M.D.]].
* Thurston Howell III of ''Series/GilligansIsland'' is a stereotypical [=WASP=] and a graduate of Harvard University.
* ''Series/GilmoreGirls'' justifies and realistically portrays this trope. Through the first half of the series, Rory's ultimate goal is to get into Harvard and a major plot point is her move to the more academically challenging Chilton in order to improve her grades and participating in numerous extracurriculars to put on the her CV. When she gets into all of her schools, including Harvard and Yale. (Yale is especially believable as her grandfather Richard has a legacy there.) She chooses Yale in order to stay closer to home. [[note]] Series creators Amy Sherman and Daniel Palladino met at Yale, so Harvard was a clever red herring they ran with for a few seasons while Rory was in high school. [[/note]] The equally high-achieving, [[TheRival Paris Geller]] is even more justified with the hyper-intensity she puts into her studies and extracurriculars, and also gets into Yale, but gets rejected from her life-long goal of Harvard, showing how competitive Ivy League application really is. Paris later gets accepted to Harvard in Season 7.
** The less believable part of Rory's acceptance is while she's shown becoming Valedictorian / school vice-president / writer on the school paper / 4.0 GPA student, you have to ask how she has time to do it all, with all the scenes Rory spends inanely wasting time with her mother, in the diner, with boys, her grandparents, reading constantly and being a part of many quaint and massively time-consuming town events. With all that going on it's unlikely she would have gotten enough done to get in to an Ivy League school, much less three at once.
* Kurt and Rachel on ''Series/{{Glee}}'' focus all of their energies in the third season on getting accepted at the fictional New York Academy of the Dramatic Arts ("NYADA"). They originally wanted to go to Julliard before being told it doesn't have a musical theater program. This storyline is related to the scrapped idea of creating a SpinOff where they pursue their dreams in New York (which sort of happens later in season 5, despite not being a SpinOff).
** ''Glee'' had a variant on this with the storyline about about the Ohio State recruiter, Cooter Menkins, coming to [=McKinley=] to check out the members of the football team, and he was only interested in Shane. Finn acted like losing this shot meant he'd lost all chance of a football scholarship. The idea that he might get a football scholarship to a less competitive program, or going to college on financial aid, is never entertained.[[note]]The Big Ten Conference, home to Ohio State, has four other members within a 200-mile radius of the show's setting of Lima, Ohio—Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue, with two others (Illinois and Northwestern) just outside it. Three other schools in the so-called "Power Five conferences" are within said radius, namely Kentucky, Louisville, and Notre Dame, with Pittsburgh just outside. In the so-called "Group of Five" conferences—a lower tier, but still in FBS football—there are even more options. Said 200-mile radius also contains Cincinnati, plus nine of the 12 members of the Mid-American Conference. Even the other three MAC members are only slightly outside that boundary.[[/note]]
** A more direct example is Quinn. After realizing she might have a life after high school after all, she reveals that she plans on applying to Yale and was later accepted, without even considering any colleges in Ohio such as Case Western Reserve University if she wants something prestigious, where she could theoretically maintain a relationship with her daughter.
** Not to mention that none of the main characters go to college in state and aside from Ohio State, not one in-state school is mentioned as an option despite the fact that Ohio has one of the highest number of colleges in the US. In fairness, many of the kids moved to New York and LA to pursue performing careers, but there's no reason why, say, Finn can't go to the open-admission University of Dayton on financial aid.
** Lauren Zizes, after being PutOnABus for all of the third season, returns for a single episode in the fourth, at the end of which she reveals that she's applying for a wrestling scholarship at Harvard. This is despite the fact that Ivy League schools rarely provide athletic scholarships. The show isn't even trying to be realistic anymore.
** Tina gets accepted to Brown University after being waitlisted.
* ''Series/GossipGirl'' is a case where the trope is {{justified|Trope}}, as the characters go to the sorts of elite New York private schools which are known to be Ivy feeders:
** Blair Waldorf considers the holy trinity among Ivy Leagues Schools to be Harvard, Princeton and Yale. She later refers to Princeton as a "trade school."
** Nate, Serena and Blair all get into Yale University. Despite not wanting to attend Yale and also being a lackluster student, Nate gets accepted due to his grandfather's influence. Serena gets accepted for her socialite status. [[spoiler:Yale later gets revokes Blair's acceptance for her manipulation of a teacher.]]
** Nate Archibald goes to Columbia. His father, Howie Archibald, is an alumnus of Dartmouth.
** Serena gets accepted to Brown University, but defers her enrollment.
** Serena's mother attended Brown University. Her father went to Columbia University.
** Both Serena and Blair later attend Columbia University in Season 4.
* Meredith Grey is frequently seen in t-shirts of her alma mater, Dartmouth College, in ''Series/GreysAnatomy''. Shonda Rhimes, creator of the show, is a Dartmouth alumna, and often references the college in her scripts.
** And then there's Christina who graduated top of her class at Stanford.
** However this trope is also subverted. Derek Shepard, one of the most renowned neurosurgeons, is frequently shown wearing Bowdoin College shirts/sweatshirts. While Bowdoin is still an elite, private school, it is not nearly as widely known as the schools in this trope.
*** Not really a subversion; Addison and Derek met while they were both students at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
*** Yes really, since the trope usually refers to ''undergraduate'' attendance.
* Carol Seaver of ''Series/GrowingPains'' attends Columbia.
* Notably averted on ''Series/{{House}}'' - although the hospital the show is set in is the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, and exterior shots are actually of the Frist Campus Center, there is no attempt to connect the setting to Princeton University, which doesn't have a med school.
* In ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'', Marshall Eriksen is a Law student at Columbia.
** Before the start of the series, Ted, Marshall, and Lily all met at Wesleyan University, a highly prestigious New England school, during their first week at college.
** Ted also becomes a professor of architecture at the end of season four. An especially JustForFun/{{egregious}} example, as the show depicts becoming a Columbia professor as a fallback for someone who can't manage to hold a job as an architect or get a building built, whereas in RealLife, you can't get a professorship at an Ivy League until you're already prominent in your field. Ted finally becomes slightly more prominent though with the GNB Building (he's even on the cover of New York Magazine because of it).
** When Robin is attending court-mandated therapy, she reads her therapist's degrees off the wall and finds herself impressed by his having attended several prestigious universities, including Harvard.
** Fairly late in the series, Barney claims to have gone to MIT. In the ninth and final season, he gets extremely drunk and [[InVinoVeritas starts compulsively telling the truth.]] Robin and Ted use the opportunity to ask him if he really went to MIT, which it turns out he did-- "MIT" being an acronym for "Magicians Institute of Teaneck". He also got a perfect score on all the [=ACTs=] (Advanced Card Tricks).
* Dennis and Dee of ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' both attended University of Pennsylvania, despite the fact that they are complete idiots. However, they were wealthy and were possibly legacies. Dennis graduated. Dee did not.
** The lawyer who serves as a recurring antagonist is a Harvard graduate.
* Though none of the main characters in ''Series/{{JAG}}'' have law degrees from the Ivy League (Harm went to Georgetown, Mac went to Duke, and Bud went to George Mason), two recurring characters did: Caitlin Pike went to Harvard and Congresswoman Bobbi Latham graduated first in her class at Yale. It is never stated throughout the series from where Meg, AJ and Sturgis got their degrees.
* The title character of ''Series/JudgingAmy'' is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
* On ''Series/TheKilling'', Councilman Richmond mentions that he met his late wife his sophomore year at Dartmouth.
* Sean Alvarez, an honest stock broker and murder victim on an episode of ''Series/LawAndOrder'', went to Brown.
* Dr. Jack Shephard of ''Series/{{Lost}}'' is an alumnus of Columbia.
* Hit Korean romantic drama ''Love Story in Harvard'' is about two South Korean first-year Harvard Law School students and their romantic pursuit of a Korean student in her third year at Harvard Medical School.
* ''Series/LukeCage2016'': Had Cottonmouth not been pressured into being part of Momma Mabel's criminal enterprise, he probably would have ended up in the Julliard School, as he was a pretty talented musician.
* Bette Porter of ''Series/TheLWord'' got her degree in Art History at Yale. She also was a graduate student there. Her Ivy League education is supposed to showcase her intelligence, drive, and affluent background.
* Upperclass WASP-y Pete Campbell of ''Series/MadMen'' went to Dartmouth College.
** The episode "My Old Kentucky Home" reveals that Paul Kinsey graduated from Princeton in 1955 and sang in the a cappella group, the Princeton Tigertones.
** Ken Cosgrove attended Columbia University.
* Zigzagged in ''Series/MacGyver2016''. Mac attended MIT for a while, but he never graduated - after a time, he got tired of looking at high level theoretical problems and wanted to do something practical with his life, so he dropped out of college, enlisted in the Army, and became an EOD tech. In season three he ends up receiving an honorary degree from a far less prestigious college in California after shutting down a terrorist recruitment ring on campus.
* Major Charles Emerson Winchester III of ''Series/{{MASH}}'' graduated from Harvard College in 1939, where he lettered in Crew and Polo. He also received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1943.
** In one episode, a visitor to the Swamp asks Charles [[BerserkButton if he went to Yale]]. He immediately snaps, "HARVARD!" before regaining his composure and reiterating, "...Harvard."
** Trapper John [=McIntyre=] is a Dartmouth alum, at least in the original novel and film.
* Ben Matlock, lead character of ''Series/{{Matlock}}'', worked for nine years before attending Harvard Law School, and therefore was significantly older than his law school classmates. He graduated from Harvard Law in 1967.
* ''Series/ModernFamily'' has Alex Dunphy applying to every prestigious, impossible-to-get-into school you could think of including Harvard, MIT, Caltech and Princeton. Subverted though in a season 6 episode when she learns she got rejected from Harvard.
* Tim [=McGee=] of ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' was an MIT grad - and was the school team's beaver mascot in his senior year.
* In ''Series/NipTuck'', Julia [=McNamara's=] mother, Dr. Erica Noughton, graduated from Columbia with a [[NotThatKindOfDoctor Ph.D.]] in clinical psychology.
** Sean also got accepted into Harvard Medical School, but the admission was rescinded when it was revealed that he failed a class because of cheating caused by Christian.
* On ''Series/{{Numb3rs}}'', mathematical genius Charlie Eppes attended Princeton at age 13 for his undergraduate studies. He graduated when he was 16.
** Larry Fleinhardt also went to Princeton and graduated when he was 19.
* Summer Roberts from ''Series/TheOC'' gets into Brown, despite not being characterized as a nerd.
** Seth Cohen, TheSmartGuy, however, doesn't get in, even though Brown was his dream school. He does get into RISD though (which itself carries Ivy League-level prestige for arts students), so the couple gets to stay close to each other.
** Taylor Townsend attends the Sorbonne in Paris before her divorce.
* In ''[[Series/TheOfficeUS The Office]]'' Andy Bernard constantly mentions his education at Cornell University and his participation in the (fictional) acapella group, Here Comes Treble.
** In the episode "Job Fair", Jim brings Andy along golfing with a potential client because the client is an alumnus of Dartmouth.
** In a deleted scene Andy claims to have "sang" his way into the school after he was wait-listed, and in another deleted scene it is mentioned that his father donated a building which is presumably how Andy even got onto the wait-list in the first place.
** Dwight considers attending Cornell because of its agricultural program (and probably to take away Andy's main advantage over him) and gains an interview. It is notable that because of lower competition and state funding, Cornell's College of Agricultural and Life Science which Dwight presumably applied to, while selective, is significantly easier to get into then the other colleges at Cornell and has the reputation as a "backdoor" into the school, particularly if you grew up on a farm.
** Its a subversion of how the trope is normally played as Andy seems to be the only character with an Ivy League background yet is one of the show's [[TheDitz ditzier]] characters. But then, the show likes [[GeniusDitz idiots with hidden depths of competence]].
* In ''Series/{{Oz}}'', Tobias Beecher attended Harvard Law.
* Besides the original novel and subsequent film, ''The Paper Chase'' was also made into a television series. The show is about first-year Harvard Law student Hart and his experiences with the intimidating yet brilliant contracts Professor Charles Kingsfield.
* In ''Series/PartyOfFive'' Sarah Reeves is accepted to Brown, though she chooses not to go. As the show takes place in San Francisco, Berkeley is mentioned quite a bit - though none of the main cast actually attend there. A one-episode character is in town because she's considering attending Berkeley but we never see her again. Subverted elsewhere when it's time for Claudia to look at colleges -- we're never actually told the names of the ones she looks at. She does go to a tour of Yale - but being a ChildProdigy with the violin, it's possible she'd have a chance of getting in.
* Harold Finch of ''Series/PersonOfInterest'' attended MIT under a false identity - [[IHaveManyNames not that "Harold Finch" is his real name either]]. One of his former classmates there ended up creating Samaritan, The Machine's EvilCounterpart.
* Averted in ''Series/PrettyLittleLiars'', as neither Spencer nor Aria get into the ivy leagues they applied for, UPenn and Brown. However, played straight once again with Spencer, and Mona, Paige and Kate, as Spencer gets into Georgetown after a lot of uncertainty over where she would go, and Mona gets early admission for Harvard, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth, Paige goes to Stanford on a swimming scholarship, while Kate is mentioned to also get into Dartmouth.
* In ''Series/{{Privileged}}'', Joanna Garcia's character is a Yale alum, and has been hired to get her employer's two daughters into Duke.
* In the Irish drama ''Series/{{Raw}}'' Rebecca is a student at Trinity College, to emphasise how posh she is. And in season 3 when Maeve decides to take a course, she enrolls at Trinity as well.
* Jessie Spano from ''Series/SavedByTheBell'' goes to Columbia. As she's a frequent Straight A Student and takes part in many teams and societies, it's pretty justified. Though she does have a meltdown when she only scores a 1205 on her SAT.
** Zack Morris gets accepted into Yale, despite poor grades or a lack of academic interest, all because he scored high on the SAT. Of course in the spin-off Zack, Slater, Screech and eventually Kelly end up attending CaliforniaUniversity.
* Elliot Reid in ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' revealed that she was in a sorority at Brown University in the episode "My Turf War".
* Matt Camden and Sarah Glass, from ''Series/SeventhHeaven'' attend Columbia Medical together.
* Miranda Hobbes of ''Series/SexAndTheCity'' got her law degree from Harvard. In one episode, she [[ObfuscatingStupidity hides her educated background]] and pretends to be a flight attendant in order to get a date during a speed dating session because [[AllGuysWantCheerleaders men are threatened by smart women]].
* Two characters [[spoiler:- Thomas and Pandora -]] get to Harvard at the end of series 4 of ''Series/{{Skins}}'', under highly implausible circumstances. Admittedly this trope crosses over with SmallReferencePools to rightpondians.
* Tony Soprano's daughter, Meadow, is an undergraduate student at Columbia in ''Series/TheSopranos''.
** Interestingly, she wanted to go to Stanford until Tony intervened.
* Dan Rydell in ''Series/SportsNight'' is a Dartmouth alumnus, a subject that is mentioned several times.
* Averted by ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''. Main character and resident GrumpyBear [[{{TheMcCoy}} Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy]] got his [[https://news.olemiss.edu/perhaps-our-best-known-alumni-are-overlooked/ doctorate]] at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Mississippi Ole Miss]]. Jim Kirk went to Iowa State if memory serves.
* On ''Series/Studio60OnTheSunsetStrip'', another show written by Aaron Sorkin, Jordan (the new, unusually young head of the network) is a graduate of Yale Law School. In order to make it plausible that her character had time to go to law school and become a network head by her early-to-mid 30s, it was revealed that she was hired as the head of a major record label immediately upon graduating Yale Law -- even though there was nothing in her resume that would qualify her for such a position. She wasn't the only character with a Yale degree, either. We were supposed to believe that Simon, one of the sketch comedy actors, attended Yale Drama School.
* On ''Series/{{Succession}}'', Kendall Roy and his [[VitriolicBestBuds frenemy]] Stewy Hosseini are Harvard graduates.
* This trope is part of the premise of ''Series/{{Suits}}''. The show takes place in a law firm that only hires graduates of Harvard Law. In the first season, much of the drama is focused on Mike Ross, a college dropout brilliant enough to pretend he has the necessary Harvard diploma.
* On ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', Sam Winchester was attending Stanford University on a full scholarship before the demon Azazel interfered. Ash was kicked out of MIT for fighting (the specifics are not revealed), and he uses his knowledge of computers to run simulations and help hunters find patterns in the monsters' victimology.
* ''Series/ThePunisher2017'': The file that David Lieberman pulls up on William J. "Bill" Rawlins III says that Rawlins went to Yale.
* ''Series/TooOldToDieYoung'': Janey gets accepted to Harvard along with a number of other unnamed but presumably similarly prestigious universities. While she's fairly mature, strong-willed and well-spoken for her age, Janey never really comes across as very intellectual or knowledgeable. Ultimately her millionaire father convinces her to work with him instead of attend college.
* In ''Series/UglyBetty'', Betty's boss, Mode Editor-in-Chief Daniel Meade, is an alumnus of Harvard, even though he is not particularly intelligent.
** Averted with Betty herself, who attended Queens College in Flushing, Queens.
* In ''Series/{{Weeds}}'', Silas Botwin, the son of the main character, dates Megan, who is accepted to Princeton.
* In ''Series/TheWestWing'', Abbey Bartlet, wife of President Josiah Bartlet and First Lady of the United States, received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School. (Bartlet himself chose Notre Dame over any Ivy League school, because until he met Abbey, he'd been thinking about becoming a priest, and his loyalty to the school [[RunningGag comes up repeatedly]]. He also went to the London School of Economics, which plays into his background as a Nobel Prize-winning economist.)
** Sam (see below for his educational bonafides) reacts angrily when Ainsley (who is largely playing devil's advocate for an anti-Ivy League position advocated by many Republicans) refers to Bartlet's Ivy League education. First, Notre Dame ''isn't in'' the Ivy League and second, why shouldn't we encourage kids to strive for an education at America's best universities? Ainsley agrees, as Sam knows she would.
** Amy Gardner, women's rights activist and later the First Lady Abbey Bartlet's Chief of Staff, tells Abbey that she got her smart mouth at "Brown, and then Yale Law School."
** Cliff Calley, Senate Majority Counsel, is an alumnus of Brown and Harvard.
** Deputy White House Communications Director Sam Seaborn graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University. He makes repeated references to his alma mater, especially in the earlier seasons, indicating a certain pride in his attendance there. "Princeton" is his Secret Service code name, and he mentions being the recording secretary of the Princeton Gilbert and Sullivan Society. His law degree is from Duke, and in one episode he recruits a Duke Law classmate to run in a Congressional election.
** [[BlondeRepublicanSexKitten Ainsley Hayes]] went to Harvard. And Smith College, a bastion of liberal feminism, which comes up when she goes back to debate there regarding women's rights.
** Josh Lyman went to Harvard ''and'' Yale, and he wants you to know that. His boasting on this before filling in for CJ during a daily press briefing counts as PrideBeforeAFall.
** Characters who ''didn't'' go to Ivy League schools went to similarly prestigious ones like Berkeley, Georgetown and Stanford. The exceptions are Toby, who went to City College of New York, and the too-clever Donna, who dropped out of the University of Wisconsin, but is surprisingly able to keep up with the intelligentsia around her, issue for issue, as if she's one of them. In reality, she's just an under-educated secretary. The case with Toby is an interesting one as Toby is generally portrayed as the smartest of the senior staff and the only one intellectually on par with Bartlet himself. Toby's less-than-prestigious university is likely a result of his far less privileged background than most of his colleagues.
* In ''Series/WhatILikeAboutYou'' Valerie Tyler attended Columbia. Holly [[FollowInMyFootsteps applies to Columbia as well]].
** Henry Gibson, Holly's boyfriend, attended Princeton.
* In ''Series/WillAndGrace'', Will Truman and Grace Adler met when they were students at Columbia University.
* Jaye Tyler, main character of ''Series/{{Wonderfalls}}'', is a recent Brown University graduate with a philosophy degree and holds a dead-end job as a sales clerk at a Niagara Falls gift shop.
* Special Agent Pete Lattimer from ''Series/{{Warehouse 13}}'' regularly wears his Dartmouth football shirt indicating he may be an alumnus.
* FBI Special Agent Monica Reyes in ''Series/TheXFiles'' studied folklore and mythology at Brown University.
* ''Series/{{Castle}}'':
** Detective Beckett is a Stanford alum, but turned cop after graduating as a pre-law major. Her parents were both lawyers, which probably helped with the money issue.
** DoubleSubverted with Alexis. She initially applies for early admission to Stanford, trying to follow her then-boyfriend there, but is rejected. She applies again the next semester and is accepted. But by that point she's broken up with the aforementioned boyfriend and ends up attending Columbia beginning in season 5. {{Justified}} here since Castle [[{{Fiction500}} made millions writing mystery novels]], though Alexis is an ambitious straight-A student who would almost certainly qualify for a full ride scholarship if they couldn't afford the tuition.
* In the finale of ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOnDeck'', Cody, TheSmartGuy, does not get into Yale, however, his equally smart girlfriend, Bailey, gets in.
* Andre Lyon from ''Series/{{Empire}}'' attended the University of Pennsylvania, one of the less-mentioned Ivies, but appropriate since the Lyons are from Philadelphia.
* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' has the premise of all the main characters (sans Penny) who are accomplished academic geniuses and from high end schools. Leonard went to Princeton, Howard went to MIT, and Raj went to Oxford.
* In ''Series/{{Veep}}'', President Selina Meyer attended Smith College.
* In ''Series/LukeCage2016'', Mariah mentions at a high-class dinner that she attended Howard University, where she met her late husband.
* In ''Series/You2018'', Guinevere Beck, the girl who becomes the lead character's main obsession, graduated from Brown, where she also first met her trust-fund baby friends, including her best friend, Peach.
* On ''Series/LifeWithDerek'', both Casey and Derek are admitted to the prestigious Queen's University upon graduating high school. This isn't a stretch for Casey, who is class valedictorian, but it's very surprising that a slacker like Derek would gain admission. (''Life with Derek'' is set in London, Ontario - a four-hour drive from the Queen's University campus in Kingston - and London is home to the University of Western Ontario, a notorious "party school" which is much more the kind of place Derek would actually want to attend.)
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** ''Glee'' had a variant on this with the storyline about about the Ohio State recruiter, Cooter Menkins, coming to [=McKinley=] to check out the members of the football team, and he was only interested in Shane. Finn acted like losing this shot meant he'd lost all chance of a football scholarship. The idea that he might get a football scholarship to a less competitive program, or going to college on financial aid, is never entertained.

* Sean Alvarez, an honest stock broker and murder victim on an episode of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' went to Brown.

** The episode "My Old Kentucky Home," reveals that Paul Kinsey graduated from Princeton in 1955 and sang in the acapella group, the Princeton Tigertones.

* Major Charles Emerson Winchester III of ''Series/{{Mash}}'' graduated from Harvard College in 1939, where he lettered in Crew and Polo. He also received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1943.

** Brooke Shields to Princeton