21 Signs You Went To A NESCAC School

Oh you've never heard of my school before? COOL.

For those of you not in the 'Cac, we're talking small liberal arts colleges with a student population often not much larger than your high schools.

We're looking at you, Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Connecticut College, Colby, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan and Williams -- the schools in the New England Small College Athletic Conference. NESCAC students like myself have heard it all, from "I've never heard of your college before!" to "Wow your campus is so small!" But we wouldn't change a thing.

We were blessed with a kickass liberal arts education, experienced the beauty of a low student-faculty ratio, and honestly surviving those frigid New England winters really built character.

1
Your college town was basically in the middle of nowhere.
2
Winters were basically the equivalent to the Arctic tundra.
3
A Cappella was life.
4
You could walk across campus within minutes.
5
Gossip traveled painfully fast on a tiny campus so everyone knew everyone’s business.
6
You and your school president were on a first-name basis.
7
There was no such thing as skipping class and getting away with it, especially when there were only like five kids in your class.
8
And being late was painfully disruptive and everyone always noticed.
9
There was no avoiding that rando you hooked up with at some party because your school campus was teeny weeny.
10
Seriously you ran into them everywhere. For better or (usually) for worse.
11
Oh and your friends and roommates eventually all hooked up with several people in common. It was slim pickings out there.
12
Whenever you meet someone new and tell them where you went to college, they’ve never heard of it.
13
And anyone who HAS heard of it, gets major bonus points in your book.
14
There was only like one bar everyone on campus went to every weekend. Because literally there were no other options. But at least you knew it would always be packed.
15
Greek life wasn’t really that big of a deal. Like, it kinda existed, but it was super small.
16
You mainly attended sporting events to socialize because, let’s be real, division three sports were kind of a joke.
17
You and your professors got to know each other on a personal level.
18
You saw naked students in public at least once. Not sure why that was a thing, but we all knew it happened.
19
You could never wrap your head around how students at giant state schools dealt with taking buses just to get around campus.
20
Your course catalogs had outrageously edgy class choices and it was always fun to tell your family what ridiculous-sounding class you’re taking next semester.
21
Whatever you decided to major in meant four long years of classes with the same crowd.

And it goes without saying, but seriously you wouldn't trade your college experience for the world.

CORRECTION: This article previously misstated that Swarthmore and Haverford are part of the NESCAC.

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