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 (the Trope Codifier) 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. The rival heroes' academy, Royal Sword, has seven counterpart houses, founded by the heroines (protagonists and love interests) who opposed said villains (Aurora, Nala, Jasmine, Megara, Snow White, Ariel, and Alice respectively), who reincarnated as the handsome male prefects of Royal Sword!

• 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.
• Black Butler: Weston College has four dorms based on flowers, colors, and animals that reflect the nature of the dorm students: the Scarlet Fox (rose), the Sapphire Owl (blue gentian), the Violet Wolf (purple dahlia), and the Green Lion (holly).
• Mashle: Magic and Muscles: Being a Hogwarts Expy, Easton Magic Academy is divided into three animal-themed houses: Adler (eagle), which values courage and conviction (Gryffindor expy); Orca (killer whale), which values wisdom (Ravenclaw expy); and Lang (wolf), which values ambition (Slytherin expy). No Hufflepuffs!
• The Harding-Pencroft Academy in the Riordanverse is a prestigious school for children and teens who aim for maritime careers. It has four houses named after different sea species that students are sorted into one of four houses based on what subjects they are studying: House Dolphin (for communications, exploration, cryptography, and counterintelligence), House Shark (for command, combat, weapons systems, and logistics), House Cephalopod (which covers engineering, applied mechanics, innovation, and defensive systems) and House Orca (not to be confused with its Easton counterpart: ts students study medicine, psychology, education, marine biology, the humanities, and communal memory).
• In the Discworld, the Assassins' Guild School, after going co-educational, has four residential Houses dedicated to the Education of Young Ladies. These are all named after attitudinal animals known to have an aggressively assertive attitude, and in at least two cases, a conclusive way of dealing with males of the species who become superfluous to requirements. These are called Black Widow House, Raven House, Scorpion House, and Praying Mantis House.
• After their first year at Brakebills, students are evaluated for their magical specialties known as Disciplines and then sorted into groups based on them: Natural, Healing, Knowledge, Illusion, and Physical. Though the groups are technically informal, they all possess an Exclusive Clique Clubhouse, long-running rivalries exist between many of them, and it's very common for the Disciplines to be pitted against each other in school competitions.
• Pale Lights: Since Scholomance is intended to be the school for the rising elites of the Watch, the student body is split between the seven covenants that make up the upper ranks of the organization:

1. The Academy / Stripes, as the officers and politicians of the Watch, are the largest of the covenants by far, charged with effectively keeping the whole organization running. Students are expected to lead other covenanters and feud against one another for power.
2. The Akelarre Guild / Navigators consist of mad witches with mastery over the eldritch Gloam, making them inseparable from treacherous seafaring operations that must traverse the eternal black night that covers the seas. They're one of the more insular covenants, so their students partake in all manner of unique and secret rituals to master their deadly magical powers.
3. The Skiritai Guild / Militants are the killers and best warriors of the Watch. Their classes pretty much exclusively consist of being thrown into the fray against deadly monsters, sharpening the survivors into skilled masters of warfare.
4. The Peiling Society / Savants study “theistic metaphysics”, researching how natural sciences such as math and biology intersect with gods and spirits.
5. The Umuthi Society / Tinkers, focused on technology, are split into two factions: the Clockwork Cathedral, based on mundane devices (Not only clockwork, but also things like computers and smart devices); and the Deuteronomicon, which study spirit-fueled machines. Their students have the run of special workshops where they can design all manner of mad, frequently explosive inventions.
6. The Arthashastra Society / Laurels cover a broad collection of historians, diplomats, and related careers in the social sciences and humanities.
7. The Krypteia / Masks are the spies of the Watch, ferreting out the secrets of both mad cults and the officers of the Watch themselves. Their students face some of the more harrowing tests, surviving death traps and conducting espionage and blackmail against their own classmates—all while their teachers monitor their loyalty, ready to snap their necks if they're deemed unreliable.

• As a Harry Potter parody Writing Around Trademarks, the four wizarding school houses in Puffs the Play are dubbed the Puffs, Braves, Smarts, and Snakes. The main characters are all Puffs and must contend with the fact that they were sorted into the house of Perennial Losers.
• The Owl House: Rather than a house system, Hexside has a system of nine tracks that correspond to the nine major covens on the Boiling Isles (not counting the Emperor's Coven)—Abomination, Bard, Beastkeeping, Construction, Healing, Illusion, Oracle, Plant, and Potions. Each one comes with a track color, uniform, and crest to represent their track and future coven. While initially disallowed, students are eventually permitted to take multiple tracks, including Luz, who is allowed to study some of every track at Hexside. In a very deliberate nod at the Harry Potter franchise, Hexside students used to be sorted into tracks by the Choosy Hat, but the hat was decommissioned and locked up when it started trying to eat the students rather than sort them. The series later reveals that there’s a dark intention behind the Coven system: that it was created by a Puritan witch hunter in an effort to control wild magic and bind every witch and warlocks in the Isles to a spell that will kill them all on the Day of Unity.