Charts & Graphs

Big Fan on Campus

Fictional institutions of higher education and their real-life inspirations.

Fictional Institution Appears In Based On The Link
Greendale Community College The NBC sitcom Community (2009–15) Glendale Community College, California Series creator Dan Harmon was inspired to write the show after taking a Spanish class at Glendale.
Boulder Dam College The 1934 Three Stooges short Three Little Pigskins University of Notre Dame In the film, the slapstick trio is mistaken for the Three Horsemen of Boulder Dam, a send-up of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, backfielders for the university’s football team from 1922 to 1924.
Athena College Philip Roth’s 2000 novel The Human Stain Princeton University Roth’s inspiration for the novel came from his friend Melvin Tumin, a professor of sociology at Princeton, who realized that two students enrolled in his class in 1985 had never turned up for a single lecture. In the 2003 film adaptation, Williams College stands in for Athena’s campus.
Hampden College Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel The Secret History Bennington College Tartt set her debut novel at a fictional version of her Vermont alma mater, where she, like her Dionysian protagonists, studied classics. Fictional versions of Bennington also appear in the works of Tartt’s onetime classmates Bret Easton Ellis and Jonathan Lethem.
California University, Los Angeles The 2001 film Legally Blonde University of Southern California Although USC, where the character Elle Woods attends college in the book that inspired the film, was used as a filming location, the university refused to allow the filmmakers to display its name on-screen.
Faber College The 1978 film National Lampoon’s Animal House Dartmouth College Writer Chris Miller based the film’s script on experiences he had at his notoriously rowdy Dartmouth fraternity, Alpha Delta Phi. The campus of the University of Oregon serves as Faber College in the film.