<p>to all the adults/parents out there:
if you have the time, please list
1) what college you went to
2) how many/how often you keep in touch with your college friends?</p>
<p>This is just a short little survey to see if attending a top university for connections later on in life is actually true.</p>
<p>I attended Penn Wharton. My best friends in the world were found there. While I have added good friends alog the way, my 2 college best friends will be my closest friends until the end.</p>
<p>I can speak for my parents, who went to school in China then the US. They still talk and keep in touch with friends made in both countries. It’s amazing how far friendship goes…</p>
<p>You are asking 2 questions here–about friends and about “connections” (by which I am assuming that you mean connections that might help you in business). Of course, your friends can be both. </p>
<p>Your circle of friends will be smaller than the circle of acquaintances that you could still call on for help on a matter.</p>
<p>I Missed that second part that enllemenope spotted. In addition to my friendships, which are totally separate from ‘connections’, I consider my school network to be of huge importance.</p>
<p>Because I stayed with 1 employer for my whole career, I Never got to explore the network to find a job until recently when I explored a career change. The network was right there for me with amazing folks reaching out to help me explore many, varied options over several years.</p>
<p>On the flip side, when any alum, young or old, top of class or bottom, contacts me for help, I will always help in any way I can.</p>
<p>nooob,
I went to a small school you’ve probably never heard of. Yet, I have classmates who have been extraordinarily “successful” by anyone’s yardstick. I made incredible friendships in college and have kept a good number of them, even though we are scattered across the country. I am sure that I could count on any of my classmates for “networking” help, as well as many of the other graduates of my college. My experience is that you don’t have to attend a top university to make “connections.”</p>
<p>Went to a small womens college in the Northeast…e-mail weekly with several of them. We’ve been close for 30 years now. Same with boarding school friends.</p>
<p>Went to a directional big state u. We exchange Christmas cards, graduation announcements, kid’s wedding invitations,etc but wouldn’t really say we 'keep in touch" in any viable way. I got married after soph. yr. so finished sch.as a married commuter student. That pretty much changed my friendship dynamics even before we graduated. There is one friend that I know I could call at any time and it would be just the same as 25 years ago.</p>
<p>Went to Northwestern. I’m in touch with no one from there. However, through 30 years of working, I have many many connections whom I can (and do) call on.</p>
<p>Harvard</p>
<p>Well my best friend married my brother, so I keep in touch with her. :D</p>
<p>I kept up with friends more at first, but after thirty years and many moves (CA, Germany and now in NY) it’s mostly down to Christmas letters and the occassional e-mail. </p>
<p>Total friends I keep up with regularly - 6. </p>
<p>A few more I see occasionally at NYC events and we always have a great time. At least one classmate checked out my website and bought some art from me. I’ve never found connections that were useful in my business, but my degree* has* gotten me a job or two.</p>
<p>University of Florida</p>
<p>I stay in touch with several friends, one especially, on a regular basis. </p>
<p>As far as networking - UF is a HUGE school. I know people all over the country I could contact, if needed, for business. On top of that, there are Gator Clubs all over the world, and the two colleges I graduated from and the Grad School send out regular mag/newsletters which include the doings of alum - great for networking.</p>
<p>Went to Wake Forest. Don’t keep in touch at all.</p>
<p>Yale. I married one of my friends, so I see her a lot (not as often as I would like, though). Apart from that, I keep in regular touch with 2-3 people, occasional touch with 5-6 others, especially people who I have run into professionally over the years after knowing them in college. On my wife’s side, it’s about the same, but different people. (We only had a couple of friends in common in college, but in retrospect we share all our friends. In the past year, we’ve visited or been visited by 4 college friends who live elsewhere.) </p>
<p>Many of our closest friends are my wife’s classmates from law school and their significant others – we all (mostly) stayed in the same community, had kids at the same time, and see each other regularly and cross paths professionally all the time.</p>
<p>Over the years I’ve asked this same question to friends and family members. My own experience was that I kept in touch with ZERO people from my undergrad Ivy (except for husband.) Since this runs completely counter to the idea that college is the “four most important years of your life” where you’ll meet “life-long friends,” I’ve often wondered if my situation was unusual. Here are the results of my personal survey of friends who attended various schools:
Tufts (2 people) – no contact with college friends (other than husband)
University of Michigan (2 people) – no contact
U of Virginia – no contact
Amherst (2 people) – no contact
Indiana University – lots of contact with frat brothers
Brown – lots of contact</p>
<p>While I had a good time in college, the friendships were never as close or as important as the ones from home. I attribute some of this simply to the number of years spent together. In my day, we had no middle school – junior high and high school were in the same building with the same kids, so I spent 6 years with those friends rather than the 4 years of college (and some high school friends I had known even in elementary school.) I am still in close touch with this group of high school friends through phone calls and email. We are scattered all over the country and none of us live near our home state. We sometimes arrange reunion weekends (though I have never attended a general high school reunion.)</p>
<p>I went to college far from home and did not stay in that geographical area. I’m always surprised when I read my alumni magazine to see that so many people apparently do stay in touch – but they all grew up in the NE, attended college there, and remained there as adults.</p>
<p>Princeton. I keep in very close touch with my best friend from there, but then I also went to high school with her. I’m in sporadic contact with about half a dozen of my other college friends, and we all get together every 5 years when we go back for Reunions. </p>
<p>H went to JHU and is still very close to the 5 guys he roomed with at various points. We’ve all been to each others’ weddings, kids’ bar/bat mitzvahs, etc. It’s a very close-knit group even though only two couples live in the same area now.</p>
<p>As far as connections go, however, our friends haven’t had any impact on our careers, since they’re in different fields.</p>
<p>Wisconsin, best friend for over 30 years now despite living in different cities. Several others I stay in contact with several times a year. We all are in the same business more or less so that helps. Always help fellow alums and have gotten help and work from same. We have a highly organized alum group.</p>
<p>My husband and I went to a state college in NJ, so we have each other. I have not stayed in contact with any of my friends from college. My husband has maintained occasional contact with one friend, and he and I are friends with one of his professors.</p>
<p>Very small engineering school with very successful alumni. Keep in touch with 3 friends from college - 4, including my H of 26 years! H keeps in touch with several of his friends, as well. No career help from our college connections. Our very good friend is extremely high up in the chain of command at H’s company - makes no difference to him or to our other friend who also works at that company & is good friends with the top-brass-guy. We’re just regular folks, not high rollers, so maybe our life experience isn’t relevant. :)</p>
<p>As another data point, my parents (late 70s now) both went to LACs far from their homes, and far from where they live now. My mother has never lost contact with 6-7 of her college friends, even though none has ever lived anywhere near her. (It does help that one of my sisters now lives near my mother’s college, so she often sees old friends when she visits my sister.) My father has not had as much contact with college friends in the past 20 years, except for one who was also a law school classmate and who married a cousin of my mother’s. But 4 or 5 of them came to his 75th birthday party, and several more wrote lovely letters when they couldn’t come. (One, the famous founder of a famous company, called him the day after the party and spent two hours reminiscing with him on the phone.)</p>
<p>(Neither one’s career was ever advanced a whit by any of this. But, as noted, one of my mother’s cousins married a friend of my father’s, and another of her cousins married the younger brother of one of her college boyfriends. When I was in college, I – briefly – dated the daughters of one of my mother’s college boyfriends and of one of my father’s Army friends. So it’s not like no one got anything out of the social network!)</p>
<p>Southwestern University</p>
<p>I am in regular contact with my core group of freinds and we have an annual reunion. As far as business connections, it helped once.</p>