Differences Between College and Boarding School
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7 Ways Boarding School Is Nothing Like College

You actually get to be independent.

Ashley Britton
Sep 24, 2018
Syracuse University
397
7 Ways Boarding School Is Nothing Like College
Ashley Britton

There's a common conception that boarding school and college are very similar to each other, mostly because you're attending school away from home and living away from your parents. This is definitely true, and there are actually quite a few other similarities between the two.

But if I'm being completely honest, boarding school and college aren't much alike. Here are a few reasons why college is a lot different from boarding school, and if you also went to boarding school, you'll most likely agree with this list:

College campuses are huge, like VERY huge.

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It's true that at boarding school there is the college-like feel present, because it has its own campus where you have to walk from building to building for classes. But at college, you're looking at ten minute walks to class instead of one or two minutes, because all of the buildings are on opposite sides of the large campus. Sometimes I find myself having to speed walk, or even run, to class because it's on the other edge of campus from my dorm, whereas in boarding school, my classrooms were literally one building over.

There's also ten times as many people in your class.

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In high school, I graduated with roughly 120 other people in my class, so it's safe to say that we all pretty much knew everyone else to an extent. However, in college, you'll probably know about 5% of the people in your graduating class, because of how many students there are on campus. But in a way, this is a lot nicer and I actually prefer this size over boarding school, because now I don't have the entirety of campus knowing me and everything about me, and I can blend in when I want to or need to.

The food in the dining halls are *somewhat* better.

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Yes, dining halls are dining halls no matter where you go, and they get tiring after awhile, even in college. But the only advantage that college dining halls have over boarding school dining halls is that they're a lot bigger and offer more variety and diversity of food choices. In high school, it was always a standard set menu, whereas in college, there's always pizza, pasta, or salad available, aside from the hot meals they've prepared.

Residence halls are typically co-ed.

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Remember the struggle of trying to visit your guy friends at boarding school because they all lived in separate dorms, and you probably needed some type of permission to do so? Forget about that in college, because now they can literally live next door to you. This can be both a blessing and a curse, because while you get to live with your friends regardless of gender, sharing the bathroom spaces might be difficult at times.

There's not as many rules.

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I'm still sometimes triggered by all of the rules that we had to follow in boarding school, such as making sure to sign out whenever we were leaving campus, or having to check into the dorms by 10 PM. In college, none of this exists, because you're now technically an adult living on your own, so you have much more freedom in where you go, what you do, and the decisions you make.

You have more control over your class schedule.

Don't get your hopes up; you probably will still have one or two 8 AM classes at least some point in college. But the beauty of having more control of your schedule means you can actually hand pick the times you want to take the classes you're interested in or are required for your major. So if you want to start your day at noon, or want to not have Friday classes, you have a stronger chance of doing so, unlike in boarding school, where you had to stick to the standard 8 AM-3 PM schedule five days a week.

One word: tailgates.

Ashley Britton

Don't get me wrong, we still got hype for sports games at boarding school. But at college, game days are taken to a whole new level. Many people dress up in school colors and go to tailgates, followed by going to the game to cheer on the team. It's an entire day event, and it only makes you even prouder to go to the school you do just from seeing everyone's happy and positive school spirit.

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