John Walters

There are approximately 15,000 collegiate a cappella vocalists and, to paraphrase that NCAA promo, almost all of them will be going pro in something other than singing.

But not all. While he was a student at Penn, John Stephens performed in the coed a cappella group Counterparts that made it all the way to the ICCA finals. You know him better as Grammy-winning artist John Legend.

Adam Gardner of the cult-fave indie band Guster performed as a member of the Tufts Beelzebubs, one of the most acclaimed of all college a cappella groups, in the 1990s.

And Sara Bareilles, whose single "Love Song" is the first huge pop smash of 2008, is an alumna of UCLA's coed group Awaken A Cappella.

Actress Lauren Graham, who played snarky single mom Lorelei Gilmore on "Gilmore Girls," does not sing professionally. But she did sing as an undergrad at Barnard as a member of the all-female Metronomes. On the show, Lorelei's daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel), attended Yale. The Ivy League school is the birthplace of college a cappella and it still flourishes there today with 15 groups on campus.

It may be no coincidence, then, that in more than one "Gilmore Girls" episode Lorelei and Rory encounter Yale's famous Whiffenpoofs, who appear as themselves. It is most likely a coincidence that the inaugural ICCA champions back in 1996 were the all-female Loreleis from the University of North Carolina.

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