Hey everyone,
I’m considering applying to Tufts and was wondering about it’s vibe and the overall personality of the student body. I know it’s a “quirky” place and places a lot of emphasis on creativity and pursuing your own interests, but would it be too “weird” for a kid like me to fit in? I’d say I’m a pretty normal kid and while I have my own unique interests I’m not too offbeat. To put it simply, can all kinds of kids fit in at Tufts?
all kinds of kids fit into tufts. IMHO it is not quirky at all and all the kids appear normal teenagers
Give us your definition of quirky, weird, pretty normal, and offbeat, and maybe we’ll be able to answer your questions. Those words mean different things to different people. Better yet, go visit and decide for yourself. 
The school has 5,000 undergrads with a huge variety of backgrounds and interests participating in many different courses of study, extra curriculars, and other recreational activities. I can’t make any promises but I think anyone who is able to gain admission is incredibly likely to find a group of students (or several) that they mesh well with.
The fact that the admissions office overused the word “quirky” is really annoying for a lot of us Tufts students.
There are people who really represent what the admissions committee would consider quintessential Tufts. Everyone knows one or two of these people. I have one friend who’s an Olympic weightlifter/CrossFitter/fitness enthusiast, opera singer, motivational speaker, incredibly smart, and more energetic than anyone else I’ve ever met. She’s not the norm at Tufts; she’s great and I’m really glad to be friends with her, but I’m also glad that not everyone at Tufts exudes her energy. There are people who are just your pretty typical upper middle class elite college students; Tufts has loads of these. A lot of them act like they’re unique, but they’re really not that different from most students at other similar schools. Then there are a few kids who are really just incredibly strange; I have one friend who asked me if he could take ~50 headshots of me so that he could construct a 3-D model of my head and print it using a 3-D printer (I declined, if anyone’s curious). Tufts has a good amount of people who are a little nuts in a good way. I’m not sure if there’s a higher concentration of them at Tufts than elsewhere, but I know a few pretty eccentric kids that I never would have met otherwise.
I think Tufts gives people a platform to feel relatively okay about enjoying things that aren’t particularly typical, but it’s by no means overwhelming. My roommate was a star tennis player in high school and is also an incredible metal guitarist. I have friends who spend most of their time working on problem sets and writing lab reports, but every Thursday night they get together and juggle fire. In my experience, Tufts students are friendlier than students at a lot of other schools, are incredibly smart, and generally very willing to bore you with all the minutia of whatever they’re passionate about. I don’t know if that makes us quirky, but it’s the general vibe of the campus.
Tufts is “quirky” in that kids play frisbee on the quad in the snow and name the cactus plants they keep in their dorms. It’s not a school full of whack jobs. I think admissions just uses quirky as a way to distinguish us from being labeled as “Ivy reject school”. Most of the students I’ve met are very normal, preppy, academic kids.
Son was a three-sport Varsity athlete but chose to try out for the Quidditch team and hasn’t looked back. Somewhat expectedly, the Tufflepuffs (“quirky”?) qualified for Quidditch Cup X in Kissimmee, FL, this April. Our whole family sees the community as exceedingly normal, though we too noticed the marketing moniker and moved on.
I am a Tufts alum and a parent of a recent alum. I also spent 25+ years doing alumni interviews for the admissions office.
I agree with the view that descriptions of Tufts students as quirky, etc is misleading (and, i think, a bad idea). Tufts has quirky and non- quirky kids (my kid was the latter), as do pretty much all of the top schools.
There is no substitute for visiting the school, talking to students and reaching one’s own conclusions.
Ultimately, i agree with hebrewhammer’s comments.
The problem with the work “quirky” these days is that it can be seen as a code word for “being on the spectrum,” or having Asperger’s or, as the OP says, “weird.” I think a better word for a typical Tufts student is “individualistic,” who has a welcoming tolerance and acceptance for others’ individuality as well.