Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ridgemont High School: A clique-retardant wonderland in which stoners hang with the little brothers of touted football prospects and nerds get to date girls who look like Jennifer Jason Leigh. Plus the teachers – well, the history teacher, anyway – really seem to care if the kids learn. Bonus points: easy access to Cheap Trick and Earth, Wind & Fire tickets via scarf-crazed scalper Mike Damone.Where was it filmed?: Van Nuys High School, Canoga Park High School and Torrance High, all in or around Los Angeles. The school itself was based on San Diego’s Clairemont High School, where scriptwriter Cameron Crowe spent a year doing research for a book.
Animal House, Faber College: It gets edged out by Ridgemont High owing to the presence of a humorless ROTC fraternity. That said, the beer, brotherhood and babes (both in class and in the mayor’s yard) are plentiful, while the pranks are sufficiently sophisticated to take down small municipalities.Where was it filmed?: The University of Oregon (which had previously passed on “The Graduate”)
Real Genius, Pacific Tech: Sure, the science might go a little over our head. But these are no mere lasernerds, as witnessed by their car-reassembly skills and chats about “moral imperatives.” The views are great and the dorms have mysterious portal-like closets. Meanwhile, according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong about anything ever nuh-uh, the solid xenon-halogen laser referenced in the flick was an actual scientific pursuit, as opposed to something that sounded all cool and techy.Where was it filmed?: Occidental College and Pomona College, both in California
Revenge of the Nerds, Adams College: Fine, they’re not too big on computer-science majors or nosepickers. At the same time, the campus is sun-drenched and the school provides exceptional temporary housing in the gym. And how about those Greek Games, in which amateur-produced skits achieve the level of sublime performance art?Where was it filmed?: The University of Arizona (specifically, at the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity and the Chi Omega sorority), plus the outdoor carnival was shot at Texas A&M
Risky Business, unnamed high school on Chicago’s North Shore: No, most of the edumacatin’ in Risky Business occurs outside the school’s classrooms and study halls. But if it weren’t for the business skills picked up by Joel Goodson in “Future Enterprisers,” he wouldn’t have been able to organize and promote a one-night-only brothel, now would he?Where was it filmed?: Niles East High School (Skokie, IL)
Old School, Harrison University: Technically there’s no college involved, just a fraternity adjacent to a college that somehow has sway over its occupants. That said, the place has a lovely campus. Stop splitting hairs, will you?Where was it filmed?: UCLA, USC and LA’s Palisades High School, plus Harvard (!) for overhead shots, according to IMDB
Rushmore, Rushmore Academy/Grover Cleveland High: Rushmore makes the list owing to its enormous slate of extracurricular activities, everything from a beekeeper’s club to a dodgeball “society.” Grover Cleveland qualifies on its… uh, generic urban authenticity? Something like that.Where was it filmed?: Kinkaid School, Lamar High School, North Shore High School and St. John’s School, all in Houston
Clueless, Bronson Alcott High School: Perhaps the Beverly Hills school requires that its students dress a bit more fashion-forward than we might like, but its campus is green and grassy and some post-nose-job gauze is all you need to get out of gym class. And where else do pretty, popular girls make it their mission to unite ugly ducklings and skate rats?Where was it filmed?: Grant High School and Occidental College, both in Los Angeles
Friday Night Lights, Permian High School: Football! Football football football! Football! Also, there are cheerleaders and complicated issues involving race and class.Where was it filmed?: Westlake High School, Austin, Texas
Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, Vince Lombardi High School: What you have to love about the students at Lombardi High is their initiative: when the teachers try to burn some records, they take over the joint. That kind of progressive thinking will get them far in the real world, even though Joey Ramone is, sadly, no longer around to provide moral guidance.Where was it filmed?: El Segundo High School (El Segundo, CA), Mira Costa High School (Manhattan Beach, CA) and Mt. Carmel High School (Los Angeles)
School of Rock, Horace Green: It’s an institution of learning where AC/DC and Night Ranger are on the curriculum – a “school of rock,” if you will. Do we have to draw you a diagram?Where was it filmed?: Buckley Country Day School (Long Island), Wagner College (Staten Island)
PCU, Port Chester University: No fraternities? No problem! That should’ve, like, been the movie’s tagline. Anyway, despite the distraction that is Jeremy Piven’s hairline, Port Chester’s rebels strike a blow against the scourge of political correctness (“hey hey, ho ho, this penis party’s got to go!”).Where was it filmed?: Ryerson University (Toronto), University of Toronto, Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT)
Heathers, Westerburg High School: Sure, there’s cliques and bitchy chicks and jocks who consider grunting a sublime form of communication. But the school embraces loners and comes together when the beautiful people start offing themselves in droves. And by the end, even Martha Dumptruck has carved out a nice little niche for herself. Oh, the humanity.Where was it filmed?: Corvales High School (Los Angeles), John Adams Middle School (Santa Monica, CA), Osaka Sangyo University of Los Angeles, Verdugo High School (Los Angeles).
Back to School, Grand Lakes University: History profs who take your education personally! Oingo Boingo performing live in the dorms! Cool pools! But in most instances, nothing good can come out of any situation in which an old guy picks up the tab for everyone.Where was it filmed?: University of Wisconsin, UCLA
National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, Coolidge College: You gotta respect any college which allows students to stick around so long as the tuition checks don’t bounce (which is to say: every college). The one implausibility here is that the flick not only suggests that Tara Reid is intelligent enough to secure admission into a legitimate four-year institution, but that she can write a newspaper story coherent enough to be published anywhere outside the Internet.Where was it filmed?: UCLA and Marymount High School (Los Angeles)
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, unnamed high school in the Chicago suburbs: The school doesn’t exactly crackle with charisma, owing to its monotone-minded economics teacher and its bug-eyed principal. Still, the student body is big-hearted enough to arrange a “Save Ferris” benefit for one of its fallen comrades, which is something we don’t see as often as we should in this era of Facebooks and fast cars and tattoos. Shame on us all.Where was it filmed?: New Trier High School (Northfield, IL), Art Institute of Chicago, Cal State University (Long Beach, CA), El Camino Real High School (Los Angeles), Glenbrook North High School (Northbrook, IL), Maine North High School (Des Plaines, IL)
Outside Providence: Cornwall Academy: The dean and dorm master are kind of a drag, man, but the preppy kids aren’t well-blazered aspirants to political office and the school rules seem largely advisory. Separately, is Outside Providence the most underrated school/coming of age flick in recent memory, or what? Watch it again. Thank us later.
Where was it filmed?: Brown University (Providence, RI)
The Rules of Attraction, Camden College: Ah, the joys of a really liberal liberal-arts education, complete with dog-eared Nietzsche texts and painstakingly themed parties (“Dress to Get Screwed,” “End of the World,” etc.). Loses points for not specifically articulating the rules of attraction, though the flick suggests that coeds and illicit substances play a pivotal role.Where was it filmed?: University of Redlands (Redlands, CA)
Accepted, South Harmon Institute of Technology: If you don’t like the college options available to you, invent your own. The Accepted kids took this maxim to heart, though somehow they created an institution just tame enough to snare a PG-13 rating. As a result, they lost the nation’s most esteemed bikini trampolinists to UCLA. That’s a shame.
Where was it filmed?: Chapman University (Orange, CA) and Walter Reed Middle School (Los Angeles)
Mean Girls, North Shore High School: The pros include a nationally ranked Mathletes squad that draws recruiters from applied calculus hotbeds like Florida State and a faculty that looks suspiciously like the B-team members of Saturday Night Live. The cons include a rigidly defined caste system and a “Burn Book” that traffics in rumor and innuendo. All things considered, it beats prep school.Where was it filmed?: University of Toronto, Montclair High School (Montclair, NJ) and Etobicoke Collegiate Institute (Etobicoke, Canada)
Good Will Hunting, Harvard University: Yeah, Harvard kids are stuffy and wear pastel-hued sweater vests. But where else can you find hunktastic janitors/applied mathemaphysics majors roaming the halls with a quadratic mop?
Where was it filmed?: Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Toronto, Bunker Hill Community College (Charlestown, MA) and Central Tech. High School (Toronto)
