This article was co-written with Jeff “DorkSince83” Shropshire
Spoiler Alert; School kind of sucks.
If it’s not piles of homework, than its lackluster lunch options or constant bullying (maybe that was just me). How many times did you find yourself sitting in the back of the class listening to a professor drone on and on but in the back of your mind thinking “I wish there was another option.” If only there was a school filled with classes that I could pass, then I wouldn’t be grounded every weekend.
The world of Pop Culture has shown us that there are other options and all of them are fair better than regular school. Schools filled with magic, crazy frats, clones and cartoons. Who wouldn’t rather blow off Math in order to take potions? What better Principal to have than a mad scientist? What about a campus where you can form a frat for absolutely any interest you have? Television, Movies and Literature have filled our imagination with a never ending list of schools we wish we could declare as our alma mater.
Now let us play tribute to those schools that are (sadly) too awesome to really exist.
10 : Port Chester University (PCU)
When picking any college you want to avoid one whose general awesome level depends solely on a specific group of people or frat-house (hence why you won’t find Adams College or Faber College here). PCU almost didn’t make the cut for that very reason. But then, I rewatched PCU. Have you seen this movie lately? Sure, the people in the Pit are the best people out there but this school has a frat house for EVERYONE. Feminists? Got it. Hippies? No Problem. Bigots? There’s even a frat for you. Plus the frats literally run the school.
While other schools are struggling to get ten people to participate in any event, at Port Chester University you book your lame local band to play your dorm and everyone will show up (but you better have chips or they will raise hell). Even more bizarre is that almost the entire school is made up of fans of Funk-God George Clinton. This might be the biggest plus of all, you ever hear Parliament Funkadelic at a non-teen movie party? No. Last time I tried to play “We Want the Funk” at a party I was booed a minute in, and that is truly a travesty.
9 : Derrick Zoolander’s Center For Kids Who Cant Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too (Zoolander)
Don’t be fooled by it’s tiny appearance, we promise that’s just a model of the facilities. Upon completion the school is truly a masterpiece of architecture and potentially one of the wonders of the world. Outside this luxurious learning center you are greeted by a fountain containing four statues in the midst of a gasoline fight, and that alone is almost grounds for this school’s inclusion of this list. However the statue is but a small sample of this school’s charm.
Once you get inside you realize your instructors are none other then world famous models Derek Zoolander and Hansel (It’s shocking the school convinced him to take time away from modeling to teach considering how hot he is right now). Your class schedule seems to be anything but ordinary. During Derek’s pitch apparently what he meant by “other stuff kids wanna do good too” were things like rock climbing (as that’s what we see Hansel teaching).
Doesn’t it just make your mind run rampant with all the possibilities of what you could learn at this school! Let’s be honest it’s pretty obvious this school is willing to teach you anything. You just have to want to be better at something and not be able to read good either.
8 : South Harmon Institute of Technology (Accepted)
Whats’ not to love about South Harmon Institute of Technology (or S.H.I.T for short). Their school colors are brown. Their school mascot is a sandwich. Their school news paper is called the rag. The school also has a killer outdoor pool. All my college had was a football field and a bunch of statues.
As a student you have full control over dictating your course load, and by full control we mean it. You literally can invent a class for whatever it is you wish to learn (for example there is a student majoring in blowing stuff up with his mind). It’s a lot like Derek Zoolander’s Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too except it doesn’t require the prerequisite of not being able to read. South Harmon Institute of Technology’s only restriction as to choosing your major is to what extreme you as the student can go in creatively making one up (I call dibs on the History of Nonexistence).
In a lot of ways going to South Harmon is like getting a degree in Liberal Arts, except there’s a chance your professor will be Lewis Black. So actually, it’s exactly like a Liberal Arts school.
7 : Wayside School (Wayside School Book Series)
Anyone who ever read the wayside book series wished they could attend this school. First off it has the largest playground of any school around due to the fact the school was built upwards due to an architect who looked at the blue prints wrong. Instead of building a one-story building with 30 classrooms he built a 30-story building with one classroom each floor.That’s a pretty important factor to anyone young enough to attend elementary school.
The ridiculousness of this school doesn’t reside in just its ridiculous stature. Once inside you find an astonishing amount of insanity whether it be the paradox that there is no thirteenth floor yet there is a classroom on that same floor, or the fact that if you enter the basement you no longer have to attend class ever again.
6 : Acme Luniversity (Tiny Toons)
Let’s cut right to the chance, The Looney Toons are your instructors, and you take classes about comedic timing. Is there any thing more to say that will sell you on this school? This has to be one of the easiest (not to mention most fun) schools ever institutionalized.
Watch a few episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures, there is no campus on this planet with a better student/teacher relationship. Students literally are scheming with their teachers every other episode. I wonder what the AP classes would be like. I’d assume they would tackle such intense topics like falling off a cliff with grace as instructed by Wile E Coyote.
5 : Monster U (Monster University)
We are not too sure if Monster U has many majors other then those involving scaring children, but we’re confident most of those classes would be pretty fun. Your homework assignments basically revolves around coming up with ways to terrify children, that’s a dream come true for anyone who loves Halloween. You don’t even really need to study. Look at Mike Wazowski, he studies night and day but fails to be better than the other less studious students when it comes to the ability to scare anyone.
Classes aren’t the reason to attend Monsters U though, it’s all about the annual scare games. The scare games are to Monster University what Greek Week is to regular campuses. But while Greek Week can come across as very abstract to others outside the Greek system the scare games stay inclusive to the whole campus. This is probably due to the previously stated fact that we are fairly certain every job in this world revolves around the art of scaring children. With exciting competitions like Avoid the Parents and Don’t Scare the Teen it’s impossible to not get sucked into the festivities. If you lived in a world of Monsters this would be like your Olympics.
4 : Clone High (Clone High U.S.A.)
There’s a good chance you’re not familiar with Clone High U.S.A. That’s because MTV killed it four episodes in. However the premise (from the people who brought you Scrubs and The Lego Movie) is magical.
For reasons unknown a group of shadowy figures have cloned every famous world leader and they’re all in high school together. There’s the nerdy Abe Lincoln, the Jock JFK, the gothy Joan of Arc and the party animal Ghandi. Every day is chaos. Your principal is a mad scientist with a robot butler, every week there’s some fun activity (Film Festival, Track Meet, Basketball game) and Teen Wolf is one of the students (not making that up).
However the biggest appeal to Clone High for me is their winter holiday. They’ve gotten rid of all Religious specificity and created Snowflake Day. Snowflake Day involves a pirate with a candy cane for a hand and a yearly Snowflake Day Cabbage Patch. Now that’s a holiday I can get behind!
3 : Greendale (Community)
The great thing about Greendale is that everyone at Greendale is fully aware of how insane that school is. Dean Pelton is just the tip of the iceberg with his affinity for Dalmatians and women’s clothes.
A quick glimpse at the courses you can take and the professors that teach them makes it utterly obvious that everyone at this school was cut from the same mold. Where South Harmon Institute allowed you the pleasure of creating any class you’d like to learn Greendale has gone ahead and invented those classes for you before you even get there. Classes on ladders, billiards, holding your breath, pottery and seizing the day are just what we’ve seen in the first season.
Greendale is less a university and more a social center for learning new hobbies. If by chance you are someone who likes their college a little less studious and a little more social then Greendale is still the place for you. They pretty much have a social event or dance every week, as well as have had full student body participation of paintball games on more then one occasion. They also may be the only community college with dorms which really sells the full college experience.
2 : Hogwarts (The Harry Potter Series)
Hogwarts is a given on a list like this, however most people will probably have a problem with it being second place and not top honors. The reason is that the problems with attending Hogwarts can sometimes outweigh the benefits.
Sure it would be pretty amazing if you checked your mailbox one day and inside found a wax sealed envelope inviting you to attend Hogwarts. However before you go bragging to all your friends don’t forgot that you can’t tell anyone about going to this school except for your family. You have to hide the fact that magic exists from the non magical world. In other words to all your friends you just disappear for nine months out of the year.
Plus the coursework doesn’t lend itself to any jobs outside of the magic community, and let’s be honest other then becoming teacher or working for the ministry of magic there aren’t many high profile careers in magic. Also don’t even think about exploring your options outside of magic either due to the fact that according to Hogwarts you don’t need fundamental classes like English and Mathematics (which definitely seems odd as you’d assume math would be crucial in potion making).
Did we forget to mention that you also need to watch out for everything that’s designed to kill you (which is basically everything in the school). The staircase are constantly moving, the school sport has a high injury level, werewolves are teachers, even the trees at this school are trying to kill you.
Despite all of the faults though, who doesn’t want to learn how to fly on a broom or turn their enemies into a rat!
1 : Sky High (Sky High)
Sky High, for anyone unaware, is a school for the offspring of superheroes. The school allows their students to hone their budding super skills. This school has a fantastic track record, only once in the history of Sky High has a student not developed a power.
Even if you don’t develop a super power it still means one or both of your parents have super powers which is pretty awesome. Now you may think that being a super hero has the same issue as being a Wizard (secret identities and all) but in the world of Sky High the rest of the world is fully aware that superheroes exist. Not only do regular citizens know superheroes are real but they love them.
Even if you end up as “hero support” (aka sidekick) and have the worst super power ever discovered you will still be looked up to by the 99% of the world population without any powers. The movie’s example of a horrible super power is one kid can glow, that’s it. Sure while that’s a pretty weak super power it still comes with a few benefits, like if he was to go hang out at a rave, those people would adore him.