I’ve seen some stuff about the different reputations and personalities of the residential colleges. I was just wondering, do these “personalities” really hold true? With everyone just randomly placed into one, I don’t see how there can really be a personality that is consistent through out the college, and holds up over the course of years.
Honestly, I’m just a bit worried about being placed into a college that doesn’t fit my personality.
The reputations and personalities are only true to a limited extent. I think the reason that some of it may be true, despite random placement, is because you’re frequently exposed to a certain culture. Since you’re literally living in that sort of atmosphere, it would inevitably be passed down, at least to some degree. And thus, the cycle continues for the newly matriculated students.
However, as I’ve said, the culture only has a limited influence. You can’t expect every student to fit 100% into it, nor would they want to. So while there may be some sort of a reputation of the college as a whole, individually, you should find that the students are just regular students and that they come in all sorts of different, cool personalities. Not everyone is completely brainwashed into the reputation. Well, except maybe Will Rice, they’re quite competitive 
@ChiGuy123 But if one’s like, the “party college” and the other one is known to be anti-social, does that really hold true? Because I’m kinda middle of the spectrum and don’t want to just have it one way all the time.
Even in those cases, no. I would say 75% of the student body are with you on being in between on the spectrum. The colleges that are known for being the party college tend to be because of a certain number of people on one floor. We’re talking about a handful of people (as in less than two dozen or so) out of a college of hundreds. Also there is no anti-social college. Even the most tightknit colleges aren’t exclusive. As I said, students are of all sorts of different types.
I’ve never observed any systematic difference in the students from different colleges, even just in terms of overall social structure. Part of what gives colleges reputations is how central they are on campus (McMurtry and Baker students seem to often know people at a lot of colleges, might just be anecdotal), as well as how big the public parties are that the college throws, though the latter certainly isn’t a perfect correlation. I’m not someone who “parties” and I’m only vaguely aware of the reputations of a couple colleges, but no college has an antisocial reputation. In my experience a “reputation” almost always just means an especially active party floor that people from other party floors at other colleges frequent.