With spring break approaching and Presidents' Day passing, high school students embarking on their "college visits" start becoming more ubiquitous on campuses everywhere. Parents eagerly take notes on the differences between meal plans and study-abroad programs, while their children text-message one another regarding the physical status of the host student body.
And Tufts has proven to be a popular destination. Indeed, massive throngs of would-be-freshman packed the walkways and paths throughout campus during these past weeks, staring down the real-life college students as they shuffled through the snow on their way to class.
At this time of year, it is almost as if Tufts has become a police state, but one patrolled by cadres of cheerleaders and soccer moms instead of military platoons.
Approximately 1,300 of these pamphlet-toting, parent-dragging high school students will actually enroll here at Tufts, while many times that number will be rejected. With the hundreds of schools open for enrollment around the country, what is it about Tufts that makes living in Medford for four years so appealing?
Many current students claim that the most attractive aspect of Tufts is its ability to combine the best of both worlds, in a variety of ways. Freshman tour guide Adam Dworkin always describes this phenomenon to his "pre-froshes."
"Tufts is big enough to be anonymous, but small enough to get one-on-one attention; close enough to a big city but far enough away to have a campus community; prestigious enough to have an impressive student body, but relaxed enough to have friendly students," Dworkin said.
Another aspect appears to be the diversity of students. While some may claim Tufts is a homogenous batch of upper-middle-class-suburban white kids, others maintain that the University is diverse in many important ways.
According to "The Princeton Review's Guide to the Best 365 Colleges," a must-have for any high-school senior looking at top schools, one student reported that interests and perspectives of the student body varied greatly.
"What makes Tufts unique is that there are frats that attract a certain type of student as well as places like Oxfam Cafe, which serves vegetarian/vegan cuisine, where a different crowd of students hang out," the Princeton review quotes a student as saying.
Another interesting aspect of the undergraduate student body is the existence of both the highly-regarded College of Liberal Arts as well as the prestigious College of Engineering.
"When I heard about the engineering school, I realized I could come to college without writing a bunch of papers," senior Ethan Senterfitt said.
In contrast, sophomore tour guide Katie Winter claims that one of the most common questions from potential freshman concerns the international relations program.
Winter also said that the diverse body of applicants to Tufts creates a student body with a large range of interests and activities.
"I always tell [prospective students] that at Tufts you can be a biology major and star in the musical on the weekend," Winter said.
