| abstract | - Despite being considered among the most selective colleges in the United States, with admission rates from 6% to 16%, Ivy League schools show up frequently in fiction. In teen dramas, a main character (or two) will always get accepted into an Ivy League school. Expect this to become a key part of high school 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 local college that keeps the show in the same setting. 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 they might as well study with the hobo in the alley. Characters who go to Ivy League schools seldom discuss their coursework or major. In the case that we're past the high school setting, this information will commonly show up in a character's educational background. Usually this will be done as a shorthand to show that a character is either smart, ambitious, or filthy rich. The rule about not discussing coursework also holds at this stage. This has all been popularized by Author Appeal -- quite a few writers went to the Ivy Leagues, and enjoy name-dropping the institution to show off how cool they are. Beyond that, it's just plain convenient--why actually show a person being smart when you can just say they came from the Ivies? Depending on the setting this trope can still be plausible, usually if it focuses on people whose career interests directly relate to their alma mater. A show about high-tier law firms, for example, is justified in having an above-average Ivy quotient because Harvard and Yale have high-quality law schools. However, even in the most extreme cases, any given environment will have plenty of people who graduated from other schools for the simple reason of sheer numbers. The eight Ivy League universities are:
* Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island, founded 1764)
* Columbia University (New York City, founded 1754)
* Cornell University (Ithaca, New York, founded 1865)
* Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire, founded 1769)
* Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded 1636 and is the oldest college in the US)
* Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey, founded 1746)
* University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded 1740)
* Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut, founded 1701) Don't feel bad if you've only heard of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, since those are referenced in fiction far more than the others. (They also happen to be the perennial "top three" schools in the United States, with only the order varying from year to year.) Columbia gets fewer mentions since NYU is the "go-to" institution to name-drop if you want your characters in The Big Applesauce, while many of the others are surrounded by inner-city and Dartmouth is in the middle of nowhere, the nearest cities offering much off-campus nightlife being two hours' drive in opposite directions. Some non-Ivy League schools can fall under this trope as well, due to their elite status and overuse in fiction. Examples include:
* Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It is said that if Rutgers were not the State University of New Jersey it would have been in the Ivy League.
* Stanford University, another elite, prestigious school located in Palo Alto, California. Common in works set on the West Coast.
* MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) or Caltech (the California Institute of Technology). Most common with characters whose backgrounds are in math, science, engineering, or programming.
* The Seven Sisters, a group of prestigious women's colleges. 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 Granola Girl and/or Straw Feminist.
* The Juilliard School, a prestigious arts school in New York City with programs in music, theater and dance. If your Teen Drama includes an amazing classical musician or the star of the school musical, they will always go here, even though the latter is a case of Did Not Do the Research; Juilliard does not have a musical theater program.
* The medical school of The Johns Hopkins University, common for elite doctors or medical researchers (for example, Dr. Gregory House).
* The film schools of University of Southern California (USC) and New York University (NYU), two of the best in the country, for budding directors.
* The more prestigious Historically-Black Colleges, such as Spelman, Morehouse, and Howard, on shows with predominantly African-American casts.
* Georgetown University in Washington DC for TV lawyers and politicians who don't go to Harvard or Yale. 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. Why aren't any of these considered "Ivy League" schools, you wonder? The League is actually an athletic conference within the NCAA; the eight schools' sports teams compete primarily against each other in the playing season. The social connotations developed around this. For the British equivalent, see Oxbridge. In Japanese works, the "Tôdai" or University Of Tokyo can fulfil this narrative role in a pinch. In Australian works, expect to see The Group Of Eight. For Taiwanese shows, Tai Da (National Taiwan University) is used in the same way. And in mainland Chinese works, expect to see the C9 League, especially Peking University and Tsinghua University. Contrast California University. Examples of Ivy League for Everyone include:
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