Basic Trope: College is portrayed as just like high school.
- Straight: When students go to Troperia University, they find that they have lockers, cliques, and social pressures such as dances.
- Exaggerated: Troperia University is pretty much exactly like a high school in every way, right down to the head of the school calling himself the principal, students all having the exact same classes (with one or two differences), and even they riding commuting in school buses and living with their parents.
- Downplayed: There are some similarities to a high school, but only a few.
- Justified:
- It's a very small school, so they can have amenities others wouldn't think about offering.
- Most of the class went to high school together, so it makes sense that they'd keep in touch.
- The characters are all studying the same major, so they'd naturally spend a lot of time together.
- It's a community college, so students do not live on campus, and many of them are recent high school grads or GED recipients.
- The entire student roster is deranged and wish to keep the high school environment even if they no longer have the age for it because they do not wish to grow up.
- The "campus" is a diploma mill and does not cares what students do as long as the checks clear.
- Inverted: (High School is "College, Part 1") High school is portrayed exactly like college, with dorms and different fields of study.
- Subverted: A character gets to Troperia University expecting it to be just like high school. He's quickly proven wrong.
- Double Subverted: But when he transfers to Tropeville State, he finds it's just like a high school.
- Parodied: College is just like first grade, with gold stars for good papers, recess on the playground, and mandatory naptime.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: College is nothing like high school.
- Enforced:
- The script for a porn movie was originally set in Troperia High School, but due to laws against depicting minors having sex, a search and replace was done on all instances of "high school" to change to "university" and a disclaimer stating that all the characters are 18+ was put at the front. No other changes were made.
- The series is set in college, but written for high school-age teenagers: it's meant to reflect what they're familiar with while using a setting they'd be curious about.
- The college in question is meant to be a Strawman U, and the writer considered comparing it to high school to be an appropriate enough potshot.
- The series creator never went to college, and is simply assuming that it's something like high school.
- Lampshaded: "Wow, I thought when I got to college I'd stop caring which clique I'm in."
- Invoked: The college is intentionally designed more like a high school because of the president's belief that most people prefer high school to college.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: The president takes steps to distinguish the college from a high school, believing people do not like high school very much.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played For Laughs: This Trope justifies all kings of hijinks comedy a la Animal House - a High-School Hustler will never stop being a hustler, after all, just grow older.
- Played For Drama: The story is about how some poor Butt-Monkey loser tried his damnedest to maintain his sanity throughout the last months of high school, maintaining solace in the fact that once he entered college he would find, if not friendship, then at least less ostracization... or at least less blatant ostracization... and then he discovers that absolutely nothing changed. At all. Even jerks that torment him are the same. He decides to commit suicide or perform a mass shooting after his first swirlie.
- Played For Horror: Jim the school geek enters university and meets his Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up, who decides to celebrate by upgrading from name-calling to attempted murder.
Back to College Is "High School, Part 2", and don't forget your locker combination.
