TV & Movies

The College Elena Attended In The Vampire Diaries Is A Real Place

Whitmore College exists IRL — but with a different name.

by Christine DiStasio
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
Nina Dobrev as Elena Gilbert at Whitmore College in 'The Vampire Diaries'
Annette Brown/The CW

CW’s hit show The Vampire Diaries ended five years ago, but fans in 2022 still want to step foot everywhere that Elena, Damon, and Stefan did. Elena’s college experience played a major part in her TVD journey, making fans wonder whether they can actually go to Whitmore College. It turns out that Whitmore is a real collegiate institution — it just goes by a different name.

As every good Vampire Diaries fan knows, the CW series was filmed in Covington, Georgia, and its surrounding areas for most of its time on the air. The town, which is the real-life location of TVD’s Mystic Falls, conveniently has a college nearby called Oxford College of Emory University. That campus served as the setting for Whitmore College for Season 6 and beyond. Remember when Damon, Bonnie, and Elena went to a frat party so she could learn how to feed on humans?

Originally, fans knew Whitmore as a creepy place that imprisoned Damon in the 1970s. But by the end of the series, between Elena (played by Nina Dobrev) going back to school and Alaric teaching a class in occult studies at the same college, it became a major location for Elena and her gang.

The college is also where fans met Alaric’s love interest Jo, a doctor at the university hospital who becomes Elena's mentor after she decided that she also wanted to be a doctor.

While TVD’s supernatural characters are banned from Mystic Falls, they clearly ran amok without issues at Whitmore College — and so can you. True superfans can apply to Oxford College and major in virtually any liberal arts subject you can think of. However, the college had only a 20% admissions rate in 2020, so don’t assume that you can attend the same college as Elena Gilbert without hard work and dedication. And even if you do get accepted, you probably won’t get Elena and Caroline’s sweet dorm room though. Dorms like that only exist on TV.

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