Atmosphere at Trinity College

Colleges and Universities A-Z Trinity College (Connecticut)
1

I decided to attend Trinity College on a whim and am almost certain I made the wrong decision. I know others who absolutely love the school, but it is just not for me…

I’m not a heavy drinker and I don’t do drugs, but somehow at Trinity I am shunned for not doing those things.
The best I can describe it as is that Trinity’s culture is backwards. I’d be shocked to see a lot of these people in the real world. There’s nothing to do besides go to the frats and drink and it is just not for me. You make friends and then they forget who you are in the morning because they black out. Partying starts on Tuesdays and goes until Sunday night- it’s just hard for me to fit in here because I am not into ruining my life with drugs and alcohol.

I know most colleges have parties and a drinking culture, etc., but it is very exaggerated at Trinity. I just feel like I am wasting my time here and won’t have a memorable college experience if I stay. Don’t get me wrong- I love to have a good time it’s just that Trinity’s definition of a good time is a normal person’s nightmare.

In addition, my classes are fine and the professors seem to know what they are doing, but the academics are not good enough to persuade me to stay. I have no idea how I would come out in a good situation and job in four years, which says a lot. I came from a boarding school on the east coast, but don’t fit in with all of the “boarding school delinquents” who have all congregated here.

Also, Trinity’s cliques are worse than any high school around and I constantly feel belittled and judged. I’ve tried to stop caring but it’s hard when the norm at Trinity is being rude and uninterested towards everyone you meet. I’m really not sure how this specific group of people has congregated at Trinity… it could be a great school if things were different. I know it sounds like I am just complaining, but I find it to be very, very true. I know bad people are everywhere, but Trinity is just the perfect storm of Hartford, bad people, and a disappointing culture, which makes everything more exaggerated. I’m not even going to get started on the area Trinity is in…

I truly wanted to like Trinity and am upset that I don’t. I just really feel as though I don’t fit in here and never will. I am a friendly person and make friends easily, but I have no interest in shoving a needle up my arm in St. Anthony’s Hall and drinking drugged jungle juice just to fit in and make friends, so I believe I am going to transfer.

So many people are happy at Trinity, but I think you have to be the right person to be happy here… The President is trying to make an initiative for community, but a widespread problem so large like the one at Trinity is impossible to change within such a short amount of time. Believe me, I genuinely appreciate the efforts they are taking to improve things, but I can’t waste four years of my life and thousands of dollars to be unhappy.

Has anyone else experienced this with Trinity? If so, did you transfer and were you happier elsewhere? If anyone stuck it out, how was your experience? Do you wish you would have left?

2

Hi,
Daughter is a freshman at Trinity and finding exactly this. She’s planning to transfer, and may not even go back next semester. I’d be interested in hearing from others with this experience, specially other schools where students were happier and why.

3

Hi,

I wanted to offer my perspective as a student who recently transferred into Trinity. Trinity is very “work hard play hard,” but I’ve found myself with about a 50/50 split in friends. About half are stereotypical Trin kids who are involved in Greek life, go out and party all the time. The other half are really motivated students who rarely go to parties but are involved in other activities. But as an upperclassman, I’ve met a lot of people who told me that they wanted to transfer out of Trinity freshman year but ended up staying - and realized a lot of their issues were actually issues with adjusting to college in general, and not really specific to Trinity.

So, long story short: I transferred into Trinity (from a much larger school.) Joined a ton of different on-campus activities. Met a lot of people who are in the Hall, etc. but also a lot of really great people who definitely don’t fit the Trinity stereotype. As a transfer student I know that there are legitimate reasons to leave a college, but I would encourage anyone considering transferring to make sure they’ve really gotten involved in everything the campus has to offer first. As a freshman, I think you’re definitely encouraged to follow a certain, traditional path - but there are plenty of people who do break out of that.

Feel free to PM me!

4

Total and complete same. I had a terrible science teacher that essentially told me to quit and take it next year (First grade was a 93) as an idiot I listened and now I am behind in Pre-Med courses. I’m out of here tbh attempting to hear back from the colleges I denied

The cliques are absolutely terrible here as well I don’t know what I was thinking honestly “prestige” doesn’t mean a thing. Unless you’re becoming a lawyer I guess

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I would like to let people reading this know that the OP has had an experience at Trinity that is not indiciative of what it’s like to attend school here. No one is ever sticking needles in their arms, and those students that one meets during their freshmen year that are drinking heavily and doing drugs are not the typical student at this school. As with nearly any college, there are parties here and many people do enjoy going to them. Try finding another NESCAC, Ivy League, or other top LLC or university that doesn’t have a party scene. There are drug laden final clubs at Harvard, Princeton has a weeklong celebration of lawn parties at the Eating Clubs, there are popular off-campus houses at Williams that people drink heavily at, and there are drunk students at Colby during their annual Doghead celebration. I can tell you with absolute confidence that Trinity’s atmosphere is pretty much identical to any other college in the east. What the OP either does not yet know or does not yet realize is as students progress through their four years here (and at any college) they realize that partying isn’t the reason to be in school and will begin to express themselves in a plethora of creative ways. It’s hard to adjust to college at the beginning because one might feel intimidated by the scope or the atmosphere that you think is predominant, but drinking, drugs, and elitism is not the atmosphere here and it is unfortunate that the OP views it that way. There was a magical point during my sophomore year that my friends and I noticed when we suddenly felt very comfortable expressing our true selves through music, the array of majors, and alternative friends groups, yet I’m still a very “preppy” guy in a fraternity who likes to let loose within moderation on the weekends. As for those students I knew when I was a freshmen that drank 5 nights a week and squandered their allowance on drugs: they are the social outcasts now who are being alienated as their low GPAs and intellectual disinterest comes back to bite them when it is time to apply for jobs. They still carry on with their ways, but only they think their behavior is cool and therefore stick to themselves. I rarely see them anymore when I go out on the weekends, and when I do, they’re alone in their little introverted packs that used to seem to me and many others as the definition of “cool” in college.

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Well I agree with trinity17 and also disagree. I have friends at Amherst, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Yale, Harvard, and MIT. They all have different experiences although it is a college on the east coast. We are all people that grew up in Connecticut. Every college has a different atmosphere and for Trinity it isn’t a neutral type of atmosphere you either LOVE it or you absolutely hate it but can’t get out because of financial aid. Most of the upperclassmen I know do not like it and are counting the days. Some freshman I know love Trinity and for the first time in their lives feel complete. But, others have negative experiences at Trinity like really negative. Especially, with campus safety there have been instances of campus safety going into rooms when they really shouldn’t be. One friend slept naked and campus safety came refusing to leave. We also apparently have a serial rapist here but, as you can see on the news a lot of other colleges have those as well and lack of transparency when talking about assaults. If you’re a minority I really really think you should look elsewhere. I’m black and most of my friends who are also POC hate the elitism and racism. But, you can find that anywhere it just really sucks if you thought college would be different. Some of the people hear say the worst things but, I we’re going to face that at most places. There are some good majors here some get more attention than others. It’s a common for biology majors and other majors to get angry at their department. You know tenure teachers that are more interested in research than teaching. Not everyone is partying 24/7 but there is a huge party culture here that can be very annoying and terrible. There are places like the FRED and the Mill you can go to but sometimes you won’t feel like you belong there as well. Trinity is just a place of extremes. With absolute confidence Trinity isn’t like every other college in the northeast it really isn’t. It’s not fair to compare these colleges and say they’re the same because they’re really not. Often the best way to find out if trinity is the right place for you is to spend a semester or two here. But, I already know for a fact most freshman are leaving or have already left. Just remember wherever you choose be happy and make sure you’re getting the help you need. :slight_smile:

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Also counseling center is terrible here if you want a place for a good resource to talk to about transitioning and other stuff it’s ok you might have to shop around for some people you connect with and there isn’t even a lot of staff here! From what I heard if you actually seriously need meds and have serious issues trinity isn’t the best place for that

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^ That is so sad to hear. It sounds like you are not happy there at all. I’m sorry that it did not work out for you. My D did not end up applying to Trinity. We actually got to walk around Agnes Scott when we visited Atlanta and it was a pretty campus. I know that this was your other choice. I hope things get better.

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You admit you selected your college “on a whim.” You lost me after that.

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@eam747 move on, put Trinity in your past. My daughter was accepted there as well and we went to the accepted students day. She is an excellent judge of character and wise beyond her years. After sitting in on some “classes” where she had already covered the material in her high school AP classes, she got an uneasy feeling. Then halfway through lunch, listening to some very curious conversations between faculty and parents, she turned to me and said, “we can go now.” I couldn’t have agreed more! I’ve also had experience with a dear friends’ child who had a most miserable time there and has since left. I’ve heard many of these stories. You cannot simply say the Trinity culture is just like every where else. It is not a “normal” drinking culture, plus the drugs and cliques are big. The administration is aware and making efforts but it’s not yet working. You already know what you need to do, so do it.

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I would suggest that if a student is Extremely unhappy with his or her school, he/she must transfer if possible. There are too many colleges to just resign oneself to a miserable college experience. Transferring from Trinity is very doable because it has a respectable reputation. My child transferred from Trinity and hasn’t regretted the decision one day.

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It is frankly farcical to mention Trinity in the same breath as Amherst, Yale, Harvard and MIT! Get real.

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The true judge of all institutions of higher learning will be the long arm of history, not the infinitesimally brief memory of CollegeConfidential.com and its status-seeking sycophants.

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I transferred out of Trinity in the second semester of my freshman year and have to agree with a lot of what calliopecarol and other commenters are saying. Yes, it’s true that drinking and partying exists to some extent on most college campuses. Yes, you will find cliques and social groups pretty much everywhere. Yes, even in college you will find apathetic and unmotivated students. However, the social atmosphere at Trinity is quite unlike any other. This is due to a lot of different factors such as its small size, its location in a rundown Hartford neighborhood which makes the campus rather insular, the prevalence of fraternity life alongside the lack of sorority life and the percentage of students from wealthy boarding school backgrounds. These things are not major factors by themselves, but when combined they make for a very interesting situation.

Some people fall in love with Trinity right off the bat and end up staying for 4 years. But there are also a lot of kids at Trinity looking to transfer for the same reasons caused me to leave. Like lots of others, I tried so hard to love Trinity but I just couldn’t. Something about the school just didn’t sit well with me. If you are a minority like I am, not wealthy and not a heavy drinker, please consider carefully whether Trinity is the place for you. I admit I was allured by Trin’s prestigious NESCAC reputation and the amount of financial aid I was given, but seriously, no amount of prestige or scholarship money is worth your suffering.

Like the other commenter said, Trinity really is a place of extremes: most students drink 3 or 4 nights a week, the rest hardly go out at all. The school itself (faculty, administration) is incredibly liberal, most students are conservative. It is entirely possible at Trinity, and very likely, to be from MA/CT and only hang out with people from those states. Likewise, it is possible to be a minority and only have friends who are minorities. This polarization tends to create a very cold, uneasy atmosphere. I knew something was up when I was informed by my friends that it was “social suicide” to sit on a certain side of the cafeteria. I could never understand why the racist and elitist posts on Yik Yak were the ones getting the most upvotes. Because I obviously had never been to college before, I tried to convince myself that Trinity’s atmosphere was the norm. Now I know otherwise, but I guess I had to see it for myself to believe it. When I was considering transferring a lot of other students told me to “stick it out” till my upperclassman years when things would get better, but honestly I didn’t see any point in staying at a place that clearly wasn’t the right fit when I could thrive somewhere else. For any Trin kid considering transferring, sometimes it’s just a matter of finding a school with the location, social life, academic program, etc. that’s right for you.

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These threads would be hilarious if it weren’t for that tragic fact that some insecure kid will come in here and take it seriously.

I think that if you can’t find ANYbody to hang out with you might consider some introspection.

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@klingon97 it seems you missed the entire point of @trinity17 's post.

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I’m sorry are you talking to me? :slight_smile:
I haven’t been on in a while. I chose Trinity because of money and my parents really wanted me to go to a good school so did I since I worked very hard in high school

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Things have gotten better but I wish I went to Agnes Scott and never applied to Trinity. But then I think am I trying to do a grass is always greener on the other side

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What everyone else has said is entirely valid, I do have friends here and I am looking to leave for all the same reasons.

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@klingon97 what a supremely elitist comment. And you missed the point entirely. Such nasty comments aren’t helpful here.