three tropes in one: Ivy League For Everyone

This trope description seems to go into three separate tropes.

1) Fictional characters have an easier time getting into ivy league schools (I don't know about this one)

2) Admittance in an ivy league school is a goal for a character or two in a lot teen drama. In some extreme cases it's "Ivy League or nothing!"

3) An ivy league school background is used to indicate or emphasize "character x is smart" and specific school used to indicate or emphasize a character is extremely competent in certain fields (Every Engineer Is From MIT)

For the record, Every Engineer Is From MIT is a redirect I added within the past few weeks.

I thought it was more about the fact that whenever a (non-fictional) university is mentioned, it is likely to be one of a select few famous universities.

@ 3, that would likely be a subtrope of Small Reference Pools.

IMO Every Engineer Is From MIT is a specific sub trope to this and should be YKTT Wed separately, as this is more about intellectuals all go to the Ivy League in works. (Even MIT even appears in Japanese works in this fashion.)

Is it really a subtrope? Sounds like the same trope to me.

As for the OP's concern, I think this trope is a variation on Small Reference Pools. The heart of this thing is that in pop culture, if there is a college involved that has to be named, it will be a name school, those in the Ivy League or schools of equivalent fame.

I think it's one trope that just has a name that accentuates one facet over another.

edited 1st Nov '11 11:26:06 PM by ArtemisStrong

Ivy League Or Nothing seems like it might work as a separate trope.

I'm heard a kinds of real life colleges referenced in fictional works, not just ivy league schools. However, If a character is a genius in his field they usually come from an ivy league school.

I'd say the first two are too intertwined to be split. We'd just end up with two pages that nearly duplicate each other, and in six months time, a TRS thread about merging them. Maybe a soft split on the same page, but keep 'em together.

Splitting them from the third is probably worthwhile though. The first two (loosely speaking here) are kinda a "before" and the latter is generally an "after" trope. We join the first two as the characters head towards university, the latter is generally about characters either during or after they've graduated.

I think the first two should keep the current name though. A new name for the latter a an anime character name of course reflecting small reference pools or easy name recognition seems like a good option to me. Not sure I would use Ivy League (or any named institutions for that matter) though, too many national variations really. The Engineer variant, is the same thing (as is the less seen Every Performer is from Julliard or RADA) as academic from Oxbridge or Ivy League.

Every Specialist Is From Easily Recognised Name School

edited 2nd Nov '11 6:58:14 AM by CrypticMirror

What about when a ditzy character gets accepted into an Ivy League school, possibly as a gag or to show off Hidden Depths.

Ditzy Genius?

edited 2nd Nov '11 2:13:37 PM by captainpat

Generally, name-dropping a famous school is an easy way to establish a character's intellectual/musical etc. credentials if they went there/go there/got in there.

Maybe the problem is more that the description does not match how the trope is used...

Well, do fictional characters have an easier time getting into Ivy leagues? because that what this trope was supposed to be about. Here's the YKTTW

So it's one of those "trends in fiction" tropes.

Yea, but you ask me the YKTTW isn't troppable. It just read like "I can't believe this character got into an Ivy League school".

edited 5th Nov '11 11:17:08 AM by captainpat

Well, it looks like it got heavily refined after the YKTTW, and in a good way, so I don't see how that comes into consideration.

The trope is about Small Reference Pools in regards to college and how that stretches the viewer's Suspension of Disbelief to the point of absurdity.

The definition unpacks some of the more common ways this trope plays out, as well as some background info on the specific colleges most commonly cited in the examples.

I'd say this is fairly routine for a lot of tropes; descriptions for tropes focus on and flesh out some of the more typical ways the trope is used, but the trope itself is a bit larger than that.

I really feel this particular trope has everything you need to know in the title: everyone either want to get in, is in, or graduated from prestigious colleges in fiction.

There are two separate tropes tacked to what this one was supposed to be, that's hardly good. Also, I disagree about the majority of fictional characters either graduating or trying to into an ivy league.

Who cares about majorities of fiction? Majorities of fiction don't have Puberty Superpower, and even majorities of superhero comics don't have Puberty Super Power, but Puberty Super Power is a trope. A trope is a story-telling device, not necessarily an omnipresent one. That's why we have Omnipresent Tropes to make that distinction.

edited 5th Nov '11 1:11:01 PM by ArtemisStrong

Now, I'm confused. What do you think this trope is?

"Everyone either wants to get in, is in, or graduated from prestigious colleges in fiction." Everyone being everyone in works that use this trope.

Or again, it's that if a school is mentioned, it will be a prestigious, easily-recognizable name (if it's not California University or some other made-up school), regardless of context.

It's an assumptive, reductive trope that is related to a lot of the Hollywood tropes we have on here, like the You Fail X Forever collection (or whatvere they're called now). It's Hollywood boiling stuff down to the lowest common denominator, and losing a lot of reality (or verisimilitude if you're feeling fancy.)

I think the way the description splits it up is simply based on the common manifestations of the trope. I wouldn't call those separate tropes, though.

So then it's not everyone. It's a character that has graduated or wants to get in an ivy league.

Edit: it make little sense for us to have a trope deal with cases where a character is trying to get in a college and a character that's already graduated from college.

edited 5th Nov '11 2:27:01 PM by captainpat

You're being excessively literal.

Also, it doesn't just deal with people who are going to go to college and those who have graduated. It has to do with the representation of schools in fiction.

Simply saying a trope applies to many situations doesn't mean it needs to be split into many separate pages. That would destroy the trope, be redundant, and have people getting confused and sending the whole shebang back to TRS.

I agree tropes are flexible, but I think there is a completely different trope about different trope about certain kinds specialist coming from certain kinds ivy league schools.

Bu-bu-but... That's my whole point. (silent weeping) That all specialists come from only certain well know schools reveals a Hollywood prejudice and ignores the vast amount of schools there are out there.

That everyone looking at schools have a short-list of only the most well known colleges reveals a Hollywood prejudice and ignores the vast amount of schools there are out there.

That in some works, if a college or university is ever mentioned, the name you hear is one of the names you always here reveals a Hollywood prejudice and ignores the vast amount of schools there are out there.

Looking at the comments of this thread, it seems this is how people are interpreting Ivy League for Everyone.

I totally can see where you're complaint arise from, but this thread seems to be just a back-and-forth at this point. It'd be nice to hear some other voices on the issue.

I think its OK to have one trope about a small reference pool of elite universities (regardless of whether the work is about students hoping to go there, or characters having graduated from there).