From a professor at Princeton University to a blonde socialite law student at Harvard University to a dog named Max getting the college experience to an all-acapella singing group to a genius working as a janitor at MIT, college movies can remind us of the ups and downs of earning a diploma.
The folks at Grand Canyon University did some research to find the most popular classic college movie in every state. They compiled a list of classic college movies and then sourced Google Trends data from the past five years to determine the popularity of each movie.
Here’s what they found in New Jersey:
The most searched classic college movie in New Jersey is Legally Blonde. This comedy and romance film was released in 2001! “Pitch Perfect” was the most searched classic college movie overall, followed by “Legally Blonde”, “Glory Road”, and “A Beautiful Mind”. The Northeast loved “Legally Blonde” the most. It could be because New Jersey and Pennsylvania are home to the most lawyers per resident. The South most searched for The Waterboy. Southerners take their college football seriously. places like Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas gross millions in football program revenue alone.
My favorite is multiple Academy award winner “A Beautiful Mind,’ the article shares that “It is no surprise that [it] landed at the top in four states, including Connecticut, but NOT in New Jersey. The film is set primarily in Princeton, NJ.
You can find the most popular movies across the U.S. mapped here.
Here are some of the top movies that showed up in the survey…