<p>I was on Midd's admission site and i saw this thing about how they admit more frosh in february. Can anyone who has done this program or who knows more about it tell me about it? I am interested to know whether the Febs are able to integrate into campus culture okay once they arrive. Also do they take the same classes as everyone else? Thanks!</p>
<p>About 90 “Febs” come each spring. Some will live in freshman dorms, most do not. I think a lot of them get the housing vacated by juniors going abroad or live in Sophomore housing. Last year Battell (the largest freshman dorm) got 4 febs. Febs take the same classes as everyone else, and like everyone else at midd, their first semester they have to take a freshman seminar. I think they get last registration their first semester, which kind of sucks, but otherwise its just the same space/prerequisite limitations. </p>
<p>I’m not a Feb, so I’m not sure what their experience exactly is. In my experience, Febs tend to be friends with Febs, especially in the beginning. That being said, most of the other freshman I know were really excited to meet the Febs, so its not that they can’t integrate into campus life, its just that you tend to make friends in orientation/FOO/your dorm/freshman seminar.</p>
<p>In my experience, the febs were perfectly integrated. By the end of our second year, we didn’t divide people into groups of febs or “regs”. That being said, at Middlebury, you tend to remain friends with the people you were close to your first year, so many febs were already friends with other febs. I took a semester off and thus graduated with the febs. I never felt excluded from that group of people or from the “regs”. It’s a small school and everyone basically hangs out with everyone.</p>
<p>The only downside I can see to the feb program is that you are not on the same graduation schedule as the rest of the student body. You have to stay a semester later than the rest to graduate in feb, and so you will be looking for a job at a sort of odd time. I wasn’t a feb myself, but I had a lot of feb friends who said it was a little hard to return to school once a good part of your friends enter into “real life”. The origin of the program, I’ve heard, was to get a second crop of students that would fill up dorms left vacant by students leaving to study abroad second semester. </p>
<p>All in alll, I would say feb yourself if you have a truly brilliant idea that you want to see through before you matriculate. Saving kids in africa, making a movie, getting a few-month internship with a publishing house… something you really want to experience before you start the long monastic journey of middlebury.</p>
<p>Here is a link about being a Feb.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/middlebury-college/678584-midd-february-admission-question.html?highlight=feb[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/middlebury-college/678584-midd-february-admission-question.html?highlight=feb</a></p>
<p>My mom was a Feb quite a few years ago. She has told me that it took her a few weeks to adjust, just coming in to a whole different environment from suburban Massachusetts, but I don’t know how much that would have been different if she came in September or August. You aren’t the only one coming at an odd time, so you won’t feel alone. My mom was able to take I think a class or two at a college (Harvard actually) over the summer to make up for the semester she missed, and ended up graduating with the rest of the class that had come in a semester earlier than her.</p>
<p>My S is a feb-he says all his friends are febs, but is still deliriously happy at Midd. He found the small group experience helpful, and the extra “care” the febs got-great rooms, all his requested classes-a plus.
He spent the first semester at another college as a non-matriculated student getting some “cheaper” credits-all his courses were accepted so now he can graduate with everyone else if he likes.
He didn’t want to be a feb, but it ended up Feb vs not at Midd-and he’s just “happy to be there”</p>