By the time this article will have been published, it will be April 26th--five days before May 1st, and five days before high school seniors have to decide where they will matriculate.
Colleges' visiting weekends will have come and gone. Some students will have attended; others will have not, whether it was because they were busy or couldn't afford to attend or simply didn't want to go. Of the students who did go to the admitted students weekend(s) of their potential college(s), some will have found their new best friends already. Others... not so much. These are all things one has to consider when deciding where they will go to college for the next four yeas (presumably). As much as college is about getting an education, one has to consider that if they matriculate at a residential university, they will be living there as well.
To those rising college first-years who have already found their community: this article is not for you. It's great that you've found friends and a home already; you don't need advice on what college to choose. (Unless you've found two potential homes, which is an altogether different problem.) This article is for those students who aren't sure if their dream school--or better yet, the school everyone tells them should be their dream school--is a place where they'll feel comfortable. To you, I say the following: it's okay. You don't have to come into your freshman hall having already found your seven closest friends. I can't give advice that will equally apply to everyone who might read this article, but I can tell you my experience in the hopes that it will make your decision somewhat easier.
At exactly this time last year, I was at VISITAS, Harvard's visiting weekend. Making friends was not the greatest of my problems. What I found during VISITAS and again during Opening Days--Harvard's orientation week (immediately after move-in and immediately preceding the start of classes) was that people can be really friendly--especially when no one knows anyone else. It almost becomes mandatory that you become cordial and sociable (note: you still don't have to be outgoing. You are allowed to be introverted; just know that people will most likely approach you even if you don't approach them). Nor does this apply only to your peers: upperclassmen are just as welcoming, probably because they've been there before--fairly recently, in fact.
I can't stress enough that this happens both at visiting weekend and once you and all the other first-years move in. In other words, you aren't particularly behind if you haven't found your best friends at visiting weekend--even if you didn't attend at all. I made good friends during VISITAS. Would I say any of them are my best friends? No--and that's not necessarily their fault or mine. Because the process of making acquaintances doesn't stop once school has started, friend circles change. You meet people in your classes. You participate in certain extracurriculars that introduce you to new people. You befriend these people and, because you spend significant amounts of time with them, become close to them. All this can and does happen without the friendships you already formed becoming less amicable. Sometimes people drift elsewhere; that isn't necessarily always a bad thing.
All this is to say that you shouldn't worry too much about committing to a certain college if you haven't already made your best friends there. For students who attended visiting weekends, I would urge you to consider the general atmosphere of the school(s) you visited and not the particular people you found.
Decisions about where you will live and learn for the next four years should (with very few exceptions) be made based on the presence or absence of a particular person. As for students who didn't get to attend a visiting weekend: after having considered the quality of education you will receive there, realize that most college freshmen are friendly, even if they're introverted and awkward; and while that awkwardness can play a complicating role, it will not make it impossible to find friends and a home.
