THE HOUSE SYSTEM IN DREARCLIFF GRANGE SCHOOL

• House-Based (absurd school divisions): Usually limited to old-fashioned British private/boarding schools (and those modelled on them), the House system is distinguished primarily by the fact that it's officially imposed by the school to foster competition (academic, athletic, etc.). In real life, Houses are distinguished by Theme Naming, Colour-Coded for Your Convenience, and often not much else, with student placement being either random or legacy-based. In fiction, they will frequently represent different personality types in the same way as organic cliques — you can expect to find an academic House, a sporty one, and so on.

Notably, in Drearcliff Grange School (a historical fantasy - Hogwarts but all-female instead of co-ed, located in Roaring 20s London) by Kim Newman, there is a house system based upon Shakespearean characters (both heroines and villainesses) and the Spice Girls of all things! So there are five houses!

• The five Houses in The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (each named after a Shakespeare heroine, with the exception of villainous Tamora) are presented as not mixing much, and each having a unique character (defined as scary, sporty, babies, posh, and "red-headed stepchildren", the ones who don't fit anywhere else). We're not told how Houses are assigned to girls who started as Firsts, but when Amy joins the school as a Third, she's put in Desdemona (the red-headed stepchildren) simply because a Desdemona Third has transferred out, and therefore there's a spare bed. Presumably, if she'd been put in one of the other Houses, she'd have been pressured into following the House stereotype. The school is further divided into Unusuals and Ordinaries.

• The traditional attributes of the five school Houses — Goneril, Tamora, Viola, Ariel, and Desdemona — are summarized as "sporty", "terrifying", "babies", "posh", and "red-headed stepchildren", respectively.

1. Goneril - sporty (Mel C): Gryffindor in its "athletic" aspect
2. Tamora: terrifying/scary (Mel B): Slytherin/Ravenclaw goths
3. Viola: babies (Emma): Hufflepuff womanchildren, the Maknae/Kouhai at least in spirit
4. Ariel: posh (Victoria): Slytherin upper-class toffs
5. Desdemona: redheaded stepchildren/gingers (Geri): Gryffindor and Hufflepuff in their "underdog" aspect; the house that the heroine and her friends are obviously in.

OTHER HOUSE SYSTEMS:

• Hogwarts students are divided into four houses (Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw) when they join the Wizarding School. Each year, they compete in a contest about getting the most school points on good behavior, and whichever house gets the most points at the end of the school year wins the House Cup. In addition, they also compete in a Quidditch tournament every year. This results in Hogwarts Houses being very tribalistic (especially between Gryffindor and Slytherin) and have wildly differing cultures, such as Slytherin having more support for blood purity and Ravenclaw being more intellectual. This setup derived from a dispute among the Hogwarts founders about which personality type (and in Salazar Slytherin's case, which ancestry) the school should recruit.
• While not every Slytherin turned out evil (they like to remind people that Merlin went there), almost every villain, jerk or unpleasant wizard in the series goes/went there, which explains why when Slytherin loses the House cup, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw gleefully celebrate Slytherin's defeat.
• Hermione actually lampshades the tribal nature of the whole arrangement, having little interest in it. Dumbledore himself wonders if maybe the Sorting should be done later, on seeing Slytherin Snape displaying considerable courage, a trait hardly common among Slytherins.
• Other good eggs in Slytherin were Horace Slughorn, Narcissa Malfoy, and her son Draco (post-redemption), and Andromeda Black, due to her lineage, was also surely a Slyth who turned out good (married a Muggle for love and was disowned, she and Ted were loving parents)
• Bad eggs in the other houses: Gryffindor Peter "Wormtail" Pettigrew (traitor to the Potters and an important Death Eater), Ravenclaws Quirinius Quirrell (the Dark Lord's meatsuit)  and Gilderoy Lockhart (miles gloriosus impostor), and Hufflepuff Cedric Diggory (becomes Umbridge's head inquisitor in the bad future where he survived).

• Impractical Magic: Istima is referred to as the 'Six Court Academy'. There are stereotypes based on each court's unique hierarchy structure, public reputation, and how their different magics impact their world view. For instance, the rigid magic of the Autumn Court means the students are taught to follow rules and protocols strictly. They tend to be bureaucrats and lawyers. However, the Night Court's magic is based on individual will power and obstinance. They tend to have stubborn and personally charismatic leaders with little consistency between regimes. The story has a great deal of mingling between courts and lets characters be informed by learning to thrive in their specific court without being completely defined by it. Language of Magic: The Autumn and Summer Courts each use a language of magic. The Summer Court uses a strict written language that causes whatever is written/drawn to happen exactly as the runes describe, much like a programming language. The Autumn Court uses spoken languages and dialects that have more complex rules and room for interpretation.
• In The Magicians, third-year students at Brakebills are tested for their magical specialties (commonly known as Disciplines) and sorted into groups based on power categories: healing, knowledge, illusion, nature, and so on. Quentin Coldwater and Alice Quinn (protagonist and love interest, respectively) are sorted into the Physical Kids - the rarest grouping of all, known for practicing messy, brutal physic-based magic (the counterpart of the underdog aspect of Gryffindor). Each group has their own elaborate dorm room, though they're more like exclusive clubhouses - all of them strictly off-limits to outsiders. Several long-standing rivalries exist between each faction, especially between the Naturals and the Physical Kids (the Slytherin and Gryffindor counterparts in this universe); the only point in which the competition between them is put on hold occurs during the Training from Hell at Brakebills South (Antarctica) in the Fourth Year.

• Students in Fire Emblem: Three Houses are divided into the titular three houses depending upon their region of origin: the Black Eagles for the Adrestrian Empire, the Blue Lions for the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the Golden Deer for the Leicester Alliance, with each house specialising in certain weapons; the DLC adds the Ashen Wolves, a semi-official house for homeless students. You can recruit students to your house if you meet their requirements or your Support Points are high enough. Once the Time Skip occurs, everyone (with some exceptions) is united under your chosen house (or the Church of Seiros depending on your route).

• Twisted-Wonderland: The all-male Night Raven College, being based on the British house system in general and Harry Potter in particular, also has colour-coded houses where students are mostly grouped based on shared character traits, also the character traits of the houses' respective founders. The difference is that there are seven of them. And each house was founded by one of the villains from Disney Classics (Maleficent, Scar, Jafar, Hades, Grimhilde, Ursula, and the Queen of Hearts respectively), who here are reincarnated as the handsome prefects of each house.

• Gunnerkrigg Court: The school is divided into four houses, although they're not shown to compete with each other. Queslett and Thornhill are made up of ordinary human students, while Chester features students with magical abilities or supernatural backgrounds such as Brinnie (actually the Valkyrie Brünhilde) and Foley is made up of fairies and forest creatures who have taken on human bodies. Each house is further divided into north and south sections, making for eight classes in each year.
• Inverted in The Owl House. Despite students being divided based on what magic track they're taking (to the point of wearing different coloured uniforms), there isn't any social stigma involving inter-track friendships or romances. In fact, it's so common that there are only four intra-track relationships seen in the entire series (including background characters) that don't involve immediate family members.
• Not academic, but the Cabins in Camp Half-Blood are all with demigods sharing a divine parent: children of Hephaestus, of Ares, of Aphrodite, of Hermes... Hermes' children are the underdog misfits, like Desdemona and Gryffindor/Hufflepuffs and Physical Kids, while the Hephaestus Cabin includes a workshop for crafting anything, etc. At first there were no cabins for children of the Big 3 (Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon) because they swore an oath after WW2 not to sire any more children, since these were too powerful (Hitler was a son of Hades, and the Allied leaders were sons of Poseidon and Zeus; the war was also about their power struggles). However at the time the saga takes place, all three of the Big 3 have broken their oaths, which has repercussions - and the children they have had in the 90s and 2000s also get their cabins; as do the children of lesser gods like Nyx, Iris, Hecate, the Fates, etc.