<p>We know the college social scene ("nerds" vs. "cool people", etc.) is completely different from high school. Some exceptions might be very small colleges and/or commuter schools. I'm trying to explain why to my kid. Here's what I've come up with so far. Let me know your thoughts on the subject.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Size - Colleges are generally so much bigger that you may never see a particular person twice. Which makes it nearly impossible for most folks to walk around on campus with any sort of individual reputation hanging over them. And if reputations at college are more identified by what a person wears, that can theoretically be changed every day.</p></li>
<li><p>Clean Slate - Most folks go away to college with few or no connections to past friends. So a high school social system built over many years is replaced by a completely disorganized social landscape. That means anyone is free to associate with anyone they want, date whomever they want, adopt whatever image or style they want, and make whatever choices they want, without any social pressure.</p></li>
<li><p>Freedom of Choice of College - Unlike high school, most folks who attend a college had at least a hand in picking it themselves. And it's a lot easier for them to leave any time they want. Many transfer in and out of colleges each year as they please.</p></li>
<li><p>Freedom of Choice of Residence - Unlike high school, where kids inherit their neighborhoods from their parents, a college kid can choose wherever he wants to live, and whom he wants to live with. And he can change it every year if he wants. Not only does this make it tougher to label people based on where they live, but it also allows people to associate more with some people than others.</p></li>
<li><p>Reaction to the Past - Many kids seem to resent the "caste system" of high school, and when the doors are thrown open at college, many don't seem eager to bring it back.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In high school you had all sorts of cliques, but they still exist in college, too – just not to the same extent. The type of college you choose, too, will typically be full of likeminded people to a certain degree. Couple that with the fact that college is a pretty big transition, and you’ve got a lot of people in the same boat right off the bat. Cliques still form, but there is simply so much more to do in college, and you meet so many people on a regular basis, so I do think size plays some role. In high school, once you formed your group of friends, that was (usually) it. You’ve already become acquainted with most of your peers and have either made friends or not. In college, the constant meeting of people keeps things flowing, and this typically clashes against those tight-knit clique systems and makes it harder for such stark contrasts to form as they did in high school.</p>
<p>At any rate, even at a fairly “nerdy” school, you’re still going to have “cool nerds” and “nerdy nerds.” :P</p>
<p>I went to a high school with around 6,000, and we had pretty much no cliques. The size does not allow for it, it is impossible to ever know enough people to establish yourself among the entire group as anything, much less as something better than any other random stranger. And if you find a group on campus that you think is just totally “you,” which for some of us is a rare find, if you don’t click with them there are thousands of other people to meet anyway and it’s no big deal. There’s no pressure socially to find the right group and then convince them you belong, you can float in and out of hundreds or even thousands of different groups of kids if that’s what it takes for you to find your niche. The opportunities are endless, you are never going to run out of people that might accept you, you are never going to get locked into one role in school society and be stuck there. Size totally changes the dynamic. I loved it and that is also part of the reason why college is so nice, same basic principle.</p>
<p>Excellent. I knew there had to be some advantage to spending your teen years in Michigan State Prison. I hear the Friday night steak was good, too. lol Just kidding.</p>
<p>People in college are very, very busy being focused on managing their own lives without being worried about being involved in yours…for better or for worse. They don’t have the time to think up ways to make any one else’s life miserable in college…if they were the sort that did that in high school.</p>
<p>Also, when students go to college all the other kids on campus have no idea of what the “pecking order” might have been in high school. No one wears a sign saying “popular kid” or “outcast.” So people tend to find each other by true affinity rather than by labels.</p>
<p>There is also a lot of peer pressure…but in college it’s a good thing. One kid being mean to another kid and there are other people around? You will not be perceived as cool, you will be perceived as mean. It’s not the way to win friends and influence people. </p>
<p>It’s also that in college there is no one monolithic group that considers itself to “run things” on campus. A campus will have a lot of different groups, each involved in their own thing…kids who are into student government, ecology, politics, journalism, greek life, jocks…no one group is predominant. You can be in one or as many groups as you want and each group can be very different as far as people.</p>
<p>You will find friends in different places and do different things with them. Not all of your friends will necessarily be friends with one another.</p>
<p>As ffhrea stated and other posters above this is factors into what makes social scene different from college, another thing I would point out is that all students ( majority ) are young adults as compared to high school you are labeled teenagers.</p>