Back To School, Please! Fictional Institutions We’d Go To In A Heartbeat

It doesn't matter whether you're still in school, just graduated, or did so a million years ago, the end of summer and beginning of "back to school" season still elicits a special mix of anxiety and excitement every year. You just can't undo all that conditioning, not to mention the fact that some of the best movies, TV shows, and books take place in the classrooms and echoing hallways of learning institutions.

Many of our all-time favorite movies and TV shows are set in schools we'd rather just watch on-screen — the death toll at The Vampire Diaries' Mystic Falls High seems a bit risky, and all those John Hughes high schools are so huge and depressingly cliquey. But we'd even live through adolescence all over again if given the chance to enroll in some other fictional schools. There are all those ritzy prep schools that would brand us for success early on (even if we'd have to face down Gossip Girl herself). There are exceptional public schools with teachers and administrators we'd love forever (go, Dillon Panthers!). And, while we're in fantasyland, there are those institutions for gifted students (ahem, Hogwarts) that would be insanely fun, no matter how dangerous their hallowed halls.

Just putting this list together gave us those night-before-the-first-day-of-school jitters. BRB, ordering our uniforms now.