--- title: Admission Accomplished: 10 Great Getting-Into-College Movies description: With the rom-com 'Admission' playing in theaters, TIME presents an honor roll of movies about kids trying to get into the college of their choice canonical: https://time.com/archive/7119469/admission-accomplished-10-great-getting-into-college-movies/ author: Gary Susman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-03-25T09:45:07.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T05:46:08.300Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Admission Accomplished: 10 Great Getting-Into-College Movies og:description: With the rom-com 'Admission' playing in theaters, TIME presents an honor roll of movies about kids trying to get into the college of their choice og:url: https://time.com/archive/7119469/admission-accomplished-10-great-getting-into-college-movies/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8dee2557934ec772/698a8f02e6e84aafd72b895e/legally-blonde-elle-woods-24168851-1280-720-e1363998950826.jpg?branch=production&width=811&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 811 og:image:height: 456 og:image:alt: Legally-Blonde og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Admission Accomplished: 10 Great Getting-Into-College Movies twitter:description: With the rom-com 'Admission' playing in theaters, TIME presents an honor roll of movies about kids trying to get into the college of their choice twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8dee2557934ec772/698a8f02e6e84aafd72b895e/legally-blonde-elle-woods-24168851-1280-720-e1363998950826.jpg?branch=production&width=811&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Admission Accomplished: 10 Great Getting-Into-College Movies > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Gary Susman](https://time.com/author/gary-susman/) Mar 25, 2013 9:45 AM UTC  MGM by [Gary Susman](https://time.com/author/gary-susman/) Mar 25, 2013 9:45 AM UTC With the rom-com ‘Admission’ playing in theaters, TIME presents an honor roll of movies about kids trying to get into the college of their choice ## The Fat Envelope 
In the movies, college always looks like nothing but fun and games – once you get in, that is. And getting in remains a preoccupation of both middle-class moviegoers and the filmmakers who cater to them.



This week sees the release of Admission, in which the cold heart of a Princeton admissions officer (Tina Fey) is melted by romance with a high-school headmaster (Paul Rudd). Note to high school seniors watching: that's one way to stand out among the applicants, getting your headmaster to woo the committee, literally. Here are some other ways, according to Hollywood, to get noticed by the college gatekeepers. niennunb ## Risky Business 
Writer-director Paul Brickman's satire of Reagan-era upper-middle-class aspirations remains as trenchant as ever. Virginal teen Joel Goodsen's desire for sex actually comes in a distant second to his desire to please his dad (say that last name aloud) by getting into Princeton. He doesn't really have the grades, but what he does have are some crude entrepreneurial skills and Tom Cruise's winning grin. No wonder he falls for working girl Rebecca De Mornay's head for biz as much as he does her bod for sin.



The movie's comic set piece has Joel trying to weather the alumni interview at the precise moment that De Mornay's galpals are turning the rest of Joel's house into a brothel to service his similarly unfulfilled buddies. Turns out Joel knows what the interviewer (perfectly deadpan Richard Masur) is looking for better than either man realized. (His frank assessment: "Princeton could use a guy like Joel.") Cruise himself never attended college, but this role helped the 20-year-old graduate to leading man status. niennunb ## Rudy 
In every guy's favorite true-life sports tearjerker (sorry, Brian's Song), Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger (Sean Astin) proves that not even poor grades or small stature are impediments to getting admitted to Notre Dame and landing a spot on its legendary football team. All it takes is persistence and indomitable will. Rudy simply shows up at the Notre Dame campus one night, meets a sympathetic priest, and through his new mentor, gets admitted to Holy Cross Junior College across the street.



From there, he works his way into good enough grades to transfer to Notre Dame. His refusal to take no for an answer also earns him a position on the team, even though that position is tackling dummy. Finally, that persistence (which Astin would put to good use again later as Middle-earth's steadfast hobbit Samwise Gamgee) earns Rudy a few moments of glory on the football field – and a movie. niennunb ## How I Got Into College 
Savage Steve Holland, the director whose deliriously cartoonish portrayals of high school life made him an '80s cult favorite, moved onto young adulthood with this farce about the horrors of the college-application process. Alas, John Cusack, star of Holland's Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer, isn't on hand this time. Instead, he has Anthony Edwards (then best known for Revenge of the Nerds) as a sympathetic college recruiter and Corey Parker (a fourth-generation Xerox of Matthew Broderick – he's not quite Jonathan Silverman, who's not quite Jon Cryer, who's not quite Broderick).



Parker plays Marlon, a senior with a modest transcript who's trying to get into a small Pennsylvania liberal-arts college in order to follow his dream girl, high-strung overachiever Jessica (Lara Flynn Boyle, in one of her earliest roles). The movie gets right the whole fraught process, from test prep courses to college recruiting fairs to the dreaded SATs (Holland hilariously dramatizes the word problems with reenactments). The result isn't as absurdly hilarious as Holland's earlier films, but anyone who's been through the application wringer, as a senior or a parent, will get a rueful chuckle out of the film. niennunb ## Spanglish 
The entire movie is told in the form of a college application essay. Narrator Cristina Moreno (Shelbie Bruce), asked to name the most influential person in her life, cites her mother, Flor (Paz Vega) and goes on to tell the story of the crucial few months when Flor, a Mexican immigrant who spoke no English, went to work as a maid for the well-to-do, extremely dysfunctional Clasky family in Los Angeles. The Claskys take to the then–pre-teen Cristina immediately, even going so far as to enroll her in the same private school their daughter attends. Flor is ambivalent, however, and not just because she doesn't want Cristina to become like the unhappy Clasky women, who range from merely neurotic and insecure to self-absorbed and monstrous.



Flor has also resisted assimilating into Anglo culture, not even bothering to learn English until she decides it's improper to keep having little Cristina translate her adult conversations with the Claskys. She seems to have imparted that ambivalence to her daughter, who's nothing but proud of her mother's insistence on holding on to her cultural roots, even at the expense of her own education. As she puts it, in the conclusion of her essay, "Your acceptance, while it would thrill me, will not define me. My identity rests firmly and happily on one fact: I am my mother's daughter." niennunb ## Real Women Have Curves 
As in Spanglish, Ana (America Ferrera, in the performance that put her on the map) must navigate between her upwardly mobile ambitions (in the form of an Ivy League college acceptance) and doing right by the Latina heritage that is her striving immigrant mother Carmen's legacy. (Carmen wants Ana to work in the Los Angeles fabric sweatshop where the other women in the family work, and can't imagine letting Ana leave home before her older sister finds a husband).



Ana has a full scholarship to Columbia, but out of duty, she does go to work as a seamstress, at least for a summer. Daughter and mother (played by the late great character actress Lupe Ontiveros) clash over other issues as well, particularly the ripening sexuality apparent in the teen's far-from-model-thin body. George Lopez is on hand as the high school English teacher who encourages Ana's college aspirations and serves as a touchstone to suggest that Ana can excel academically without betraying her roots. niennunb ## Orange County 
In Mike White's gentle teen comedy, Southern California teen Colin Hanks dreams of getting into Stanford so that he can become a writer and get away from his crazy family, not necessarily in that order. Unfortunately, guidance counselor Lily Tomlin (currently playing Tina Fey's mother in Admission) sends Stanford the wrong transcript, and he's rejected. Hanks goes on a road trip to the Palo Alto college to plead his case, but his slacker brother (Jack Black, natch), who's along for the ride, threatens to undermine his brother's efforts with his every foul-up.



Along the way, Hanks meets several grown-ups (most notably, Kevin Kline, as the writer whose novel inspired Hanks to apply to Stanford in the first place), who make him realize that getting into one's dream school doesn't necessarily solve all of one's problems, and even seemingly successful adults hardly have everything all figured out. Jake Kasdan directs with the same empathy for teen brainiacs and wackos that he brought to TV's Freaks and Geeks. niennunb ## The Perfect Score 
Here's a teen heist movie, where the quarry is the SAT answer sheet. Rather than waste their time on test-prep courses, the overachieving thieves plot to break into the Educational Testing Services building to hack the exam. Some of the kids (notably, valedictorian Erika Christensen and basketball star Darius Miles) are responding to overwhelming parental pressure; some (Chris Evans, Bryan Greenburg) simply don't have the scores they need to get into their dream schools. One of the gang, Francesca (Scarlett Johansson) is the daughter of the building's landlord, and one (stoner Leonardo Nam) is just along for fun.



There's some talk about whether the notorious test is biased toward middle- and upper-class white students, but that critique gets buried in the mechanics of the heist. Older viewers might enjoy comparing the gang to the cast of The Breakfast Club, SAT-analogy-style. Christensen is to Molly Ringwald as Johansson is to Ally Sheedy… niennunb ## The History Boys 
Alan Bennett's Tony-winning play, with its cast brought more or less intact to the screen, centers on a British grammar school in hardscrabble Sheffield whose headmaster pulls out all the stops to ensure that his eight most promising students get into Oxford or Cambridge – more as a feather in the school's cap than out of genuine support for the students.



A ringer is brought in to do test prep, though the school's dedicated and eccentric teachers (led by Richard Griffiths) seem perfectly capable of inspiring young minds to develop a love of knowledge. (Think of the school as Hogwarts, with fewer evil wizards and monsters and more sexual tension.) The clash between teaching to the test and learning for its own sake is well-dramatized and surprisingly funny. Either way, it suggests that the next generation of students is learning a lot more than anyone gives them credit for. niennunb ## How High 
Turns out all it takes to get into Harvard is some magic weed. After Silas and Jamal (rappers-turned-comedy-duo Method Man and Redman) smoke some of the mysterious marijuana, they become smart enough to attend the college of their choice. Bringing along their stash, they manage to turn Harvard into the biggest party school on the East Coast. Of course, they eventually run out of magic pot and have to figure out a way to stay enrolled when there's nothing left to roll.



Generally, the movie is as lazy-minded as any stoner comedy, though there's some pointed satire on Harvard's political correctness (particularly from Spalding Gray as a WASPy, guilt-ridden professor of African-American Studies). The stuffiest character is actually a black dean (Obba Babatunde), though he falls for the old have-a-brownie trick and loosens right up. The whole movie offers an implicit critique of the idea that supposed meritocracies like Harvard are truly just and not arbitrary, but it's less interested in exploring that critique than in lighting up a blunt and having some silly fun. niennunb ## Legally Blonde 
For the indomitable Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon, in her star-making performance), getting into Harvard (law school, not undergrad, but same diff) is no tougher to swing than planning a sorority mixer. As with so much in the Southern California princess's life, it's all about presentation. All you really need to do is find a Coppola to direct your application video. Certainly, the Harvard Law School admissions officers have never seen anything like the MTV Spring Break-style opus Elle comes up with, and they're so gobsmacked that they can't help but say yes. As they say in the admissions game, they're not looking for well-rounded students but a well-rounded class. And no one was likely to add more, um, rounding to the class than the curvy Elle. Then again, judging by her initial success in the courtroom, using her keen fashion sense to get a framed sorority sister acquitted, Harvard made the right choice. niennunb ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119469/admission-accomplished-10-great-getting-into-college-movies/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119469/admission-accomplished-10-great-getting-into-college-movies/"},"headline":"Admission Accomplished: 10 Great Getting-Into-College Movies","datePublished":"2013-03-25T09:45:07.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T05:46:08.300Z","description":"With the rom-com 'Admission' playing in theaters, TIME presents an honor roll of movies about kids trying to get into the college of their choice","url":"https://time.com/archive/7119469/admission-accomplished-10-great-getting-into-college-movies/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8dee2557934ec772/698a8f02e6e84aafd72b895e/legally-blonde-elle-woods-24168851-1280-720-e1363998950826.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Gary Susman","url":"https://time.com/author/gary-susman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8dee2557934ec772/698a8f02e6e84aafd72b895e/legally-blonde-elle-woods-24168851-1280-720-e1363998950826.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Legally-Blonde","caption":"","creditText":"MGM","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119469/admission-accomplished-10-great-getting-into-college-movies/","name":"Admission Accomplished: 10 Great Getting-Into-College Movies"}}]}] ```