Hope's Peak Academy

Hope's Peak Academy (希望ヶ峰学園, Kibōgamine Gakuen) is the school where the series is set in. To enroll, one must be top in their field of expertise and also must be a high school student. The students do not apply for the school but instead the school invites them. If they graduate from the school, they are almost certainly guaranteed for a successful life ahead. Students who attend the school are given the title "Ultimate".

Description
Hope's Peak Private Academy is an exclusive, government-sanctioned school accepting only students with exceptional abilities. Its stated goal is to raise the future "hope" of the nation, and for that reason, it became known as "The Academy of Hope". It’s a source of envy for average high schoolers, as it’s common knowledge that one can gain great success in life just by being a Hope’s Peak graduate. Certainly, many Hope’s Peak graduates are now employed in high positions in every field of the professional world, so that statement is not an exaggeration.

There are two requirements to becoming a Hope’s Peak student: One must be currently enrolled in a high school. One must super-excel at their field of expertise.

Hope’s Peak doesn’t hold any standard entrance exams, as the academy insists that the things tested by these kind of exams are meaningless for its purposes. Instead, students are scouted for by the academy's staff, who serve as both educators and researchers of extraordinary human ability. Some say Hope's Peak Academy's faculty members are much like parents, who made it their life’s mission to find talent and nurture it in their children.

Hope’s Peak Academy is not a traditional learning facility like other schools. It provides education for the talented, but at the same time it also researches that talent. The teaching staff aren’t simple teachers. They’re also scientists who research human talent. In order to provide even more funding for their experiments a special program was instated

Before any of the stories take place, Hope’s Peak was a small-scale facility that could survive on a government subsidiary and graduate donations. The research was often blocked by a lack of resources, though. The school's steering committee was not satisfied with the state of the research, so they instituted the preparatory school system in order to bring in more money.

The gist of it is that the actual Ultimate students are affiliated with the main school, but there is now a separate facility attached to it, called a preparatory school. It's located on the west quarter of the campus, while the main school remains here in the east quarter, so we don’t intermingle much. The prepatory school doesn't scout its students and it relies on a regular entrance exam to choose among applicants. The teachers are chosen the same way. The actual teachers of the main Hope's Peak are scientists who work and live at the school, while the prepatory school has regular teachers coming from outside.

Even though it’s just a regular high-school, isn’t it  there was a flood of applications because a brand name is a powerful thing. People didn’t care that it was just a preparatory school. The prestigious Hope’s Peak Academy had finally opened its doors to the public. "People are sheep." As said by Yasuke Matsuda, when he's explaining this to Ryouko Otonoshi. "They are drawn to a name, and the school took advantage of that to get more money. Thanks to that, the school went through a sudden growth spurt. We suddenly have research facilities that can make any university jealous. No one was prepared for that -- in just a year or two Hope’s Peak Academy grew to an entirely different scale."

By the time of Dangan Ronpa Zero, Hope’s Peak Academy is set up like a pyramid class system in a third world country. The multitude of students in the preparatory school exist only to support the few  Ultimates in the main one. It seems they have some kind of bogus system in place for exceptional students to transfer to the main school, but no one has actually succeeded. Our teachers probably think none of them deserve it.

Hope’s Peak Academy’s faculty building is located in the academy’s eastern quarter, and is the only building on campus students are forbidden to enter.

First Floor
Within the first floor is the entrance hall, locked up tight. The School store is found here as well, along with the A/V Room and Classrooms 1-A and 1-B. Attached to the First Floor is "Hotel Despair", the dorm area for the students, which includes a cafeteria, trash room and bathhouse. Lastly is an untitled room, but it is off limits until it is time for a Class Trial. It connects to the elevator which leads to the courtroom.

Second Floor
The indoor pool is found here, along with the library and archives. Two changing rooms are attached to the pool as well. Classrooms 2-A and 2-B are found at opposite ends of the floor. Within the men's restroom is a secret room, containing secret documents and files about Hope's Peak.

Third Floor
Upon coming up from the second floor, the Rec Room is straight ahead. To the left, it heads to the Art Room, along with the storage room. Go right, and the Chem Lab can be found. Inside the Chem Lab is the air purifier, along with the storage room. Classrooms 3-A and 3-B are right beside each other.

Fourth Floor
The Music Room can be found here, along with the Staff Room and Headmaster's Office. The Data Processing Room is locked up tight here, connected to the Monokuma Control Room. A second Chem Lab is located here, containg various chemicals and substances. Classrooms 4-A and 4-B are located next to one another.

Fifth Floor
The final floor contains a dojo, along with the illusive Biology Lab, which doubles as a morgue. The Greenhouse is found here, however, the room is given artificial sunlight and sprinklers. Three classrooms are found here, as oppose to the usual two. 5-A and 5-B are right next to each other, but "5-C" is near the Bio Lab. The room is in an utter state of ruin, which might be due to The World's Most Despair-Inducing Incident.

Basement
Located deep underground, all trash and unwanted things are found here. Makoto Naegi is sent here after Alter Ego saves him from being executed. Kyouko Kirigiri rescues him, and the two climb up a incredibly long ladder. The ladder ends at a hatch, which opens up to the trash room found in Hotel Despair.