A “fictional” alum from my college, Gary Cooper, allegedly rode a horse down the stairs in his dorm.
Fictional in that Cooper attended but did not graduate, and the horse story is horsefeathers.
I was just watching Season 5 of Veep, in which Selina Meyer’s body man Gary Walsh tells her he graduated from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. (Selina says to him, “No you didn’t!”)
Kimble wrote:
I think Major John D. MacGillis from Major Dad went to Vanderbilt. I can neither think of nor google anyone else who did.
Wikipedia articles about colleges often list famous alumni. For Vanderbilt, it includes two US vice presidents, several foreign heads of state, Dinah Shore, Amy Grant, and Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate developer of micro-financing.
Fictional alumni?
Fair enough. I did find a TV movie, The Cradle Will Fall, set on the Vanderbilt campus, but it’s a stretch to call that "famous or interesting.
Can we get a new Internet “law”: “As an online discussion asking for fictional examples of X grows longer than a handful of posts, the probability of someone naming real-life examples of X rapidly approaches 1.” 
As far as I know, my college (SUNY Plattsburgh) never had any fictional alumni. The only use of it in fiction that I’m aware of was in the movie The Last Waltz, a mockumentary about a polka band. In the movie the band played a disastrously bad concert at the college.
So ordered.
There’s a much more general rule. As a thread becomes longer, the probability of someone ignoring restrictions in the title or OP rapidly approaches 1. The chance that someone repeats an example already given (including in the OP) approaches certainty.
Particularly amusing when someone says, “I can’t believe no one has mentioned [whatever]” when [whatever] was in the OP or one of the other posts.
President Bartlet’s press secretary, CJ Cregg, went to UC Berkeley – and even gave us a “Go Bears!” once from the lectern.
I finally thought of another fictional Vanderbilt alum: Creme de la Creme from one of Key & Peele’s East/West games. 
I bet Jack Irish studied at Melbourne. Lawyer. Lives in Fitzroy. Case closed.
Yes. I looked up Penn on the site mentioned above and apparently the only fictional Penn graduate was someone I’d never heard of in a novel I never heard of by a writer I never heard of. On the other hand, it has one graduate I fervently wish had been fictional: Donald Trump.
As for prestige among the ivies, I would say there is the big three and then the other five.
I guess the other question is what do you think the writers were trying to convey by using that school?
For my school (Dartmouth) I think it’s usually used for old money, East Coast white, prep school educated, outdoorsy and athletic. Not top tier academics, but upper echelon.
Just remembered that the protagonist of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth (unnamed in the story, but called Robert Olmstead in the author’s notes), is an Oberlin student.
My wife went to Bates, and they’ve got a few mentions. Ally McBeal’s brother went there as well as her first love interest in the show. He was a friend of her bother, I believe. Jake Epping in Stephen King’s 11.22.63 went there as well.
In the episode entitled, “Paths of Glory”, it is suggested to Lisa that she transfers to Bates from Oberlin College. So you might have another Oberlin alum in a future/alternate Simpson’s universe.
Good catch - thanks!
Bumped.
Just saw a West Wing rerun, and Sam recruits Tom Jordan, an old Duke law school classmate, to run for Congress in the episode “The Midterms.” Jordan, Sam mentions, also went to Oberlin undergrad.
UT grad here, and I couldn’t think of any. I had to look Ian Malcolm up!
“David Gale” (played by Kevin Spacey) was a professor at “The University of Austin” (no not that one!) before he got put on death row.
The characters in the long-forgotten comedy Road Trip were trying to retrieve a tape from one of their girlfriends who also attended the then-fictional University of Austin.
My graduate alma mater (Harvard) has lots of fake alums: Mister Peabody, for starters. But here’s a really cool fake/real mashup: in the TV series Fresh Off The Boat, the character Eddie gets rejected from Harvard because Andy Richter determines that he has a helicopter mom. But the actor who played him, Hudson Wang, actually did get into Harvard (for reals)