Rachel Blanchard was advised to dye her hair red for her role of Tiffany. Both Blanchard and Amy Smart have blonde hair and blue eyes, and Todd Phillips felt it made sense to have only one blonde involved in the story.
The university in the opening scene flyover is Harvard University. Old School (2003) uses the same footage.
Though the film takes place at schools in Ithaca, Boston, and Austin, almost all of the college scenes were filmed at Georgia Tech, Emory University, and the University of Georgia, all near Atlanta.
Ithaca University is fictional, but Todd Phillips and Scot Armstrong are alumni of Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, and the movie is partly based on their time there.
After a successful box office run and strong DVD sales, a direct sequel was proposed but mainly failed when producers could not come up anything "that would not easily become an American Pie." Some of the purposed creative ideas would move on to become EuroTrip (2004).