History Main / IvyLeagueForEveryOne

* Deconstructed when high school students resort to [[WhatAnIdiot computer hacking to change their grades to ensure Ivy League admission.]] As Ivy League demands exceptional grades from its applicants, those people may get upset over [[TheBGrade a weak or a single outright bad grade]] destroying their chances of acceptance; this leads to hacking school computer systems. Unfortunately for them, this is against the law and said students can end up in prison. A specific example happened in Tenafly, New Jersey in 2017 [[https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/student-hacks-high-school-changes-grades-and-sends-college-applications/ with a student being arrested]] for hacking his grades and then mailing out Ivy League applications. What is worse is that offenders are just not able to get into Ivy League; they can find themselves barred from any college or university. A criminal record can ban you from receiving financial aid in many jurisdictions and many universities actually deny applications from convicted criminals for obvious safety reasons.

* Quite a few show business persons have gone to Ivy League schools.

Contrast CaliforniaUniversity.

** "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.

** Subverted in Owen Wister's "Philosophy 4" (written in 1904 and thus out of copyright and available on line), which tells the story of two young men who match this description--and their poor, immigrant, striver classmate. This was {{TruthinTelevision}} even then.

* If we're counting law schools, the US Supreme Court was made up entirely of Harvard and Yale alums with the half-exception of [[Film/{{RBG}} Ruth Bader]] [[Film/OnTheBasisOfSex Ginsburg]] before her death in 2020. 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. Finally averted with Trump's ''third'' nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, who had ''no Ivy League education at all''—she earned her bachelor's at Rhodes College, a well-regarded liberal arts school in Memphis but by no means an Ivy, and her JD at Notre Dame, likewise a well-regarded but non-Ivy school.

* 31% of [[UsefulNotes/ThePresidents U.S. presidents]] attended Ivy League schools. That percentage is even higher in recent decades: UsefulNotes/JoeBiden was the first president without an Ivy League education since UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan. This is justified as people who become president tend to come from wealthy and connected families. As you go further down the federal hierarchy, the numbers actually increase slightly. Ditto for corporate executives, especially in companies based on the East Coast.

Despite being considered among the most selective colleges in the United States, with admission rates from 6% to 16%, UsefulNotes/IvyLeague schools show up frequently in fiction. In {{teen drama}}s, a main character (or two) will always get accepted into an Ivy League school. Expect this to become a key part of high school [[RiteOfPassage senior year stress]], whether the character is trying to get into a certain Ivy League school, or deciding between an Ivy League college far away from home and a [[CaliforniaUniversity local college]] that keeps the show in the same setting.

A few institutions that aren't actually in the Ivy League but have strong reputations in certain contexts also count for this trope. Engineering hopefuls always go to MIT or Caltech. Elite students on the West Coast go to Stanford. Juilliard is this for the performing arts. Before the Ivies went co-ed, the Seven Sisters schools were this for women.

A few institutions that aren't actually in the Ivy League but have strong reputations in certain contexts also count for this trope. Engineering hopefuls always go to MIT or Caltech. Elite students on the West Coast go to Stanford. Top-flight musicians go to Juilliard.

* 31% of [[UsefulNotes/ThePresidents 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.

* Deconstructed when high school students resort to computer hacking to change their grades to ensure Ivy League admission. As Ivy League demands exceptional grades from its applicants, those people may get upset over [[TheBGrade a weak or a single outright bad grade]] destroying their chances of acceptance; this leads to hacking school computer systems. Unfortunately for them, this is against the law and said students can end up in prison. A specific example happened in Tenafly, New Jersey in 2017 [[https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/student-hacks-high-school-changes-grades-and-sends-college-applications/ with a student being arrested]] for hacking his grades and then mailing out Ivy League applications. What is worse is that offenders are just not able to get into Ivy League; they can find themselves barred from any college or university. A criminal record can ban you from receiving financial aid in many jurisdictions and many universities actually deny applications from convicted criminals for obvious safety reasons.

* Notably averted in ''Anime/LupinIIITheFirst'', where Laetitia is trying to get into college, but rather than an Ivy League school or the Japanese equivalent, Tokyo University, she wants to go to Boston College. [[spoiler:Lupin steals one of her papers and submits it to the applications board on her behalf, and gives her the acceptance letter they sent back during the finale.]]

In a particularly extreme version of this trope, there will be an "Ivy League or nothing!" mentality implying that if a character doesn't get into an Ivy League school, then their only other option is going to community college and learning how to tell when their pimp is cutting their coke with baking soda. If they get in, don't expect the characters to actually discuss their coursework or major, the name is enough to convince the audience that it's prestigious and important and that's all that matters.

* ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'': Beatrice graduated from Barnard with a bachelor's degree...which irks her father Joseph, as he wanted her to come back from college with ''[[MRSDegree a husband]]''.

** The 2020 Democratic ticket of UsefulNotes/JoeBiden and Kamala Harris is the first of either party since 1984 to not have an Ivy League alum.

* If we're counting law schools, the US Supreme Court was made up entirely of Harvard and Yale alums with the half-exception of [[Film/{{RBG}} Ruth Bader]] [[Film/OnTheBasisOfSex Ginsburg]] before her death in 2020. 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. Finally averted with Trump's ''third'' nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, who had ''no Ivy League education at all''—she earned her bachelor's at Rhodes College, a well-regarded liberal arts school in Memphis but by no means an Ivy, and her JD at Notre Dame.

Depending on the setting this trope can still be plausible, such as if it focuses on people whose career directly relate to their alma mater. Something set at a high-tier law firms, for example, is justified in having an above-average Ivy quotient because Harvard and Yale have high-quality law schools, or something set at a large high school or a prestigious private school would almost certainly have some students going to more prestigious schools. However, even in the most extreme cases, any given environment will have plenty of people who graduated or are planning to attend other schools as well.

The eight Ivy League universities are:

* Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded 1636 and is the oldest college in the US)
* Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut, founded 1701)
* University of Pennsylvania (UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}, Pennsylvania, founded 1740)
* Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey, founded 1746)
* Columbia University ([[BigApplesauce New York City]], founded 1754)
* Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island, founded 1764)
* Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire, founded 1769)
* Cornell University (Ithaca, New York, founded 1865)

Don't feel bad if you've only heard of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, since those are referenced in fiction [[SmallReferencePools far more]] than the others. Columbia gets fewer mentions since NYU is the "go-to" institution to name-drop if you want your characters in The BigApplesauce.[[note]]Somewhat ironically, as while its nowhere near as selective as Columbia's 7% selection rate, NYU still has a somewhat exclusive 34% thanks to high application numbers.[[/note]] These others are also surrounded by inner city, except Dartmouth, which is in the middle of nowhere, the nearest cities offering much off-campus nightlife [[note]]Burlington, VT and Concord, NH[[/note]] being two hours' drive in opposite directions. Cornell's in the slightly more urban Ithaca, New York (three times the population of Hanover), and quite a bit closer to significant cities, but isn't really as inner-city as the rest. As for Penn, for some reason Penn's business college The Wharton School is referenced far more than the rest of the university, to the point that many people might not realize that Wharton isn't a standalone school.


Some non-Ivy League schools can fall under this trope as well, due to their elite status, overuse in fiction, and fulfilling a specific niche. Examples include:
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%%A note before you add to this list: Being the best-known/most elite in a particular discipline does not mean a school fits this trope. They also need to be OVERUSED IN MEDIA - i.e. when a fictional character is talented in that area, they almost ALWAYS end up going to that school. If that's not the case, it shouldn't be here. For example, believe it or not, Washington University in St. Louis has a medical school that is every bit as selective and prestigious as those at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, but is not nearly as well known or as well-represented in the media and thus does not belong here. There are very few major cities in the US that don't have at least one prestigious college; we need not list every single one.
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* Stanford University[[note]]Officially "Leland Stanford Junior University", named after Leland Stanford Jr., though using the full name tends to prompt jokes about "Junior Universities"[[/note]] is another elite, prestigious, highly selective school located in Palo Alto, California that has been viewed as the west coast equivalent to Harvard. Common in works set on the West Coast. UC Berkeley and UCLA (in Los Angeles) are also highly desired schools and as California public universities the tuition is a fraction of the price of private schools for in-state students. On the West Coast, these are the schools that ambitious kids [[EducationMama (and their parents)]] want to get into, along with Caltech for the science-and-engineering-minded.
* Northwestern University, an elite institution with especially strong journalism and theatre programs, with its main campus located in Evanston, Illinois (immediately to the north of Chicago) and its medical and law schools near the Chicago Loop (local lingo for downtown). It is commonly seen in works centered in the [[Film/MeanGirls Midwest]].
* MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) or Caltech (California Institute of Technology). Most common with characters whose backgrounds are in math, science, engineering, or programming. UC Berkeley and Stanford are also strong in these areas, given their location near the major technology hubs of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley.
* The Seven Sisters, a group of prestigious women's colleges.[[note]]Includes Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley. Currently down to just five "sisters", since Radcliffe (then Harvard's women's college) ceased to exist after Harvard started admitting women, and Vassar became co-ed - but the old name stuck due to AddedAlliterativeAppeal.[[/note]] Historically, this was the equivalent of the Ivy League for women; in fact, many of them started as "sister schools" to Ivy League colleges back when those schools only admitted men. Nowadays, having a character choose a Seven Sisters school is usually a way to show that she is a GranolaGirl and/or StrawFeminist.
* 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. Alternately, they'll want to go to the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
* The medical school of Johns Hopkins University in UsefulNotes/{{Baltimore}}, common for elite doctors or medical researchers. While Hopkins is not ''just'' a medical school, its association exclusively with medicine in the media means that the name-dropping of Hopkins in any other field would be an [[AvertedTrope aversion of this trope.]]
* The film schools of the University of Southern California (USC) and New York University (NYU) are two of the best in the country for budding directors. The American Film Institute (AFI) conservatory is one of the top graduate schools.
* 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 University in DC, the coordinate colleges of Morehouse (all-male) and Spelman (all-female), both in Atlanta, and Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama.
* Georgetown University in UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC for TV lawyers and politicians who don't go to Harvard or Yale.
%% Because this bears repeating, DO NOT add schools that are simply prestigious if they're not frequently name-dropped in pop culture.

Why aren't any of these considered "Ivy League" schools, you wonder? There's an urban legend running around about the origin of the term "ivy league", namely that it comes from the roman numerals I V, and the original four were Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and whatever other school the legend-teller can remember. In fact, it merely comes from the fact that old stone buildings tend to get covered in ivy. As for who gets to be a member, the League is actually an athletic conference within the NCAA, and the social connotations developed around this. However, if your teen heroine is talking about getting a gymnastics scholarship to Harvard, it's another case of poor research since the Ivies don't offer athletic scholarships. Not officially, anyway.[[note]]What the Ivies ''can'' offer are athletic admission slots. Each member is allowed a certain number of admission slots specifically for athletes; these individuals have to meet academic requirements (GPA and test scores) that are at least reasonably close to those of the general student body. Of course, a good number of Ivy athletes ''won't need'' this break.[[/note]]

International equivalents:
* '''[[UsefulNotes/{{UnitedKingdom}} UK]]''': [[UsefulNotes/{{Oxbridge}} University of Oxford and University of Cambridge]]. The UsefulNotes/{{London}} School of Economics is a popular choice for slick ultra-modern business people. If the character must come from Scotland for some reason, the University of St. Andrews is a good choice, as the place was explicitly built on the Oxbridge model. A few British works might bother to remember that the rest of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Group Russell Group]] exists, but don't count on it.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Italy}}''': The University of Bologna - that is, the first and oldest uni in the Western world (founded in 1088) - followed by the Sapienza University of Rome (1303), the Polytechnic University of Milan (1863), the University of Naples Federico II (1224) and the Polytechnic University of Turin (1859). If you need a good business school, there's the prestigious Bocconi University (1902).
* '''UsefulNotes/{{France}}''': UsefulNotes/LesGrandesEcoles, e.g. L'École Polytechnique and La Sorbonne.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}''': Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, or simply Heidelberg University. Founded in 1386, making it the oldest university in Germany and the third university founded in the Holy Roman Empire (after Vienna and Bologna). In addition to many fields of science, it boasts a very prestigious medical school. A character who is a prominent German philosopher, doctor, scientist, politician, or businessperson, especially if they've won a Nobel Prize, is likely to have gone to Heidelberg. Additional schools may include Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Humboldt University of Berlin.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Ireland}}''': Trinity College.
* '''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. The four members of the Maple League[[note]]Bishop's University, Mount Allison University, Acadia University, and St Francis Xavier University[[/note]] also work to to cultivate this image, with all four members being pre-Confederation institutions in smaller towns in eastern Canada. 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.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Japan}}''': The [[UsefulNotes/TokyoUniversity University Of Tokyo]] or "Tōdai" for short. Kyoto University is a close second.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Hong Kong}}''': Hong Kong is unusual in that it has a number of world class universities that attract a significant number of international students in a single city including: ''[[InsistentTerminology The]]'' University of Hong Kong (HKU), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Hong Kong Baptist University (Baptist U), and Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). HKU held the top spot both in Hong Kong and Asia for many years but a lack of innovation and development in the school meant that it dropped significantly in world rankings.
* '''[[UsefulNotes/{{SouthKorea}} Korea]]''': UsefulNotes/{{Seoul}} National University (SNU) is traditionally considered to be every university-bound Korean student's dream. But students and alumni of schools like Yonsei University, Ewha Women's University ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin for women]]), and Korea University will also elicit impressed reactions by just saying where they study/studied. SNU, Korea, Yonsei are bound together to form the "SKY " universities, a colloquial term used by parents and students alike, which is considered a model example of a prestigious college. Also, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) are depicted as schools for geniuses in math and science.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}}''': National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University, National Chiao Tung University, National Chunggung University
* '''UsefulNotes/{{China}}''': The C9 League, especially Peking University and Tsinghua University.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}''': The Group Of Eight (also known as the Sandstone Universities), particularly the University of Sydney (Australia's oldest university), the University of New South Wales, and the University of Melbourne.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Sweden}}''': Uppsala and Lund University are generally considered to be the most prestigious, due to being by a large margin the two oldest institutions (founded in 1477 and 1666, respectively) in the country. The Stockholm School of Economics and The Royal Institute of Technology can generally be viewed as the best in their fields.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Finland}}''': University of Helsinki and Aalto University are the most prestigious. University of Helsinki, located in Helsini, is the oldest and also largest university in Finland (founded 1640). The Aalto University was formed as merger of Helsinki University of Technology (HUT), Helsinki School of Economics (HSE) and University of Indistrial Arts in Helsinki (UIAH). Its campus is in Otaniemi, Espoo.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Poland}}''': Jagiellonian University, also known as the University of Kraków, founded in 1364.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}''': Lomonosov Moscow State University/MSU, Saint Petersburg State University - these two are the closest Russian equivalents of the Ivy League. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology is a rough Russian equivalent of MIT and Caltech, albeit almost exclusively STEM-oriented, the epitome of nerdishness. Moscow State Institute of International Relations is an equivalent of Harvard Kennedy School, it was a college of choice for children of the Soviet elite who wanted, hypocritically, their offspring to be able to find their way around the decaying bourgeois West. Higher School of Economics is an equivalent to LSE, it is a mostly social science college founded after the breakup of the Soviet Union, so it has the fewest Soviet legacies of all.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Spain}}''': The University of Valencia, which officially dates its founding to 1499, although a papal bull authorizing it was decreed more than 200 years previous. Slightly younger is the University of Granada, founded in 1531.

* In the musical ''Theatre/SouthPacific'', Lieutenant Joe Cable attended Princeton.