The Hollywood film producer Michael O'Herlihy went there as a "little brat" and "came home a man", while a 10-year-old Garret FitzGerald wrote home in the Quichua language of the Incas of Peru.
Cearbhall O Dalaigh, Brenda Fricker, Vincent Browne, Joe Dowling and too many others of distinction to mention have also been through its doors.
Colaiste na Rinne in Co Waterford is 90 years old and, if the level of applications for this year's summer courses is anything to go by, proof that some things never go out of fashion.
The survival of the college and its continued growth is an achievement of note, but less of a miracle, it would seem, than the continued existence of the Ring Gaeltacht itself.
Approximately four miles by six, the Gaeltacht - comprising Ring and the neighbouring Old Parish - has a population of only 1,400, yet figures published last month by the Central Statistics Office suggest it is thriving.
Taken from the 1996 census, the figures showed that Ring had a higher proportion of Irish speakers - at 86.5 per cent - than any other Gaeltacht.
It shouldn't surprise then, that the institution at the heart of the Ring Gaeltacht, Colaiste na Rinne, is thriving too. While numbers at its full-time primary school have been falling, unprecedented numbers of youngsters want to spend the summer there.
Liam Suipeil, the bainisteoir of the college, says up to 80 applications a day are being received for its 1999 summer courses. Since a third three-week course was introduced in 1993, numbers have increased by 40 per cent and some 1,200 10- to 18-year-olds will be catered for this year.
Numbers in the full-time Scoil na Leanai, where children spend one year only as a final year in primary school, have fallen in recent years and currently stand at 122.
Mr Suipeil says there are four main reasons for the decline: the fall in the national school population generally, the now standard six-year cycle at second level, the welcome increase in gaelscoileanna generally and the decline in the number of boarding schools.
Many of the full-time pupils at Ring, who are all boarders, saw the school as a "stepping stone" to second-level boarding school, he explains. Many applicants are sons and daughters of those who recall coming-of-age summers in the Gaeltacht in previous decades but, while the essential Gaeltacht experience remains the same, the college itself is not standing still.
Over the past decade, £2.3 million has been spent on a redevelopment programme, the next phase of which will be a new sports hall. The college of today, however, would still be recognisable to people like Dr Garret FitzGerald, who was a full-time pupil at Ring in the 1935-36 school year and returned for the Easters of 1938, 1939 and 1940.
Some of the former Taoiseach's letters home are recorded in the book Letters From Irish College, published three years ago by Marino, and even at the age of 10 there were indications - apart from several lines of Quichua in one letter - that he would become an economist.
Describing his experience getting transport to Ring from Dungarvan he wrote: "I waited for half an hour and managed to get one [one what is not clear] for 6/- leaving me with 3/3 return bus ticket to Waterford and the train ticket and 5/- pocket money and 10/- extra." He added: "I got to Ring and did not succeed in making any friends for half an hour. Then I met a boy who came last week and I've had great sport ever since."
Michael O'Herlihy, who went on to spend 39 years in Hollywood, producing programmes such as Hawaii Five-O, had great sport too.
In the same book, he recalled how the then head of the college, Micheal O Domhnaill, took the young pupils for walks on the beaches and on Helvick Head.
"He was a lovely man, very enlightened, and if you'd been good, he'd let you shoot rabbits. It was there I learned to shoot."
O'Herlihy's memories of Ring were not all good, however. In midwinter it was "bitter, cold and damp"; he was frequently beaten "black and blue", and as a Dubliner, he had his "first contact with racism".
While he has had a theory ever since that "Auschwitz got the book of rules from Ring", he still describes the whole experience as "one of the best things that ever happened to me".
A more relaxed regime is not the only sign of the times at Ring these days. The principal of Scoil na Leanai, Maire Ni Cheilleachair, admits that with the ever-increasing distractions for today's young people, teaching them to appreciate their native language is not getting any easier.
"On the other hand, children today are not as shy, so they're not as afraid of making a mistake when they use the language," she adds.
This summer, hundreds more children will be taking chances with their Irish in Ring, and writing home to tell of the experience.