<p>Hi, </p>
<p>I normally don't post on these forms, but I've been dying to ask this question.</p>
<p>I decided (well strongly directed by my parents) on going and dorming at a large state university next year. I live about 25 minutes near the university, as its located in my hometown. I heard numerous students (mostly commuters, some dormers) from my high school are going there. What are the chances of seeing my high school peers on a 30,000+ campus? Essentially, my question is that those that decided on going to a large local university, how often did you see people from high school? It's not that I don't want to see my friends or anything, its just that I wanted to explore and expand my horizons and be myself without my former peers judging who I am. High School's been a mixed bag for me, the general public opinion doesn't really side with myself. Thanks for taking the time for reading and responding to this!</p>
<p>Unlikely - the same situation happens at my high school, a large portion of the student body goes to our flagship (which is huge) and worry that they’re basically going onto “13th grade” since they believe they’re gonna be seeing the same faces - however, it is rarely the case. Even friends who attend together have to actively seek one another out in order to be able to see one another regularly - otherwise, they’d just get lost in the masses of unfamiliar faces (which is what you want - new faces, new people.) </p>
<p>How many students from your school are actually going to this school? Odds are it’s a miniscule percentage of the number of students in your year, let alone the entire school. You will probably rarely see other students from your high school, and even if you did, you don’t have to spend any time with them if you don’t want to. It’s a big place. You can avoid anyone you want to.</p>
<p>From my memory, going by recent years, # of students that are going to the school hasn’t exceed more than 50.(Out of a school of 1200) It feels like so many, as the school is frequently mocked because its so close in favor of smaller, private universities.</p>
<p>It seems like a lot because your school only has 1200 students in it, and that’s all you know. But 30,000 students is a much bigger school, and that’s much less than 1% of the students at the school. You’re unlikely to see many students from your high school regularly, unless you take really small classes and another student from your high school is taking the same class (and that’s pretty unlikely at a larger school where the intro/GE classes are likely large lecture halls). But even then, that doesn’t mean your locked into the same experience as high school. Just seeing someone doesn’t mean that you have to hang out with them or even say anything to them. And if you don’t like them, then it’s not going to be very hard to avoid them entirely. You probably won’t even notice them unless you’re specifically looking for kids from your high school.</p>
<p>I was a commuter at a mid-sized regional university, as were about 90 percent of my high school classmates, as well as friends from other area high schools. I saw people I knew around campus a lot, but I didn’t actually have contact with them unless it was by choice - and it wasn’t a choice I made very often! </p>
<p>It’s not the same at college. You’ll see people you recognize but there are so many variations in schedules that you are not likely to see that many of your peers regularly unless this is a very tiny college. </p>
<p>My son went to a feeder elementary school, where more than half his class went on to a certain highschool. There was always a former classmate to seek out, but really, he ended up with a whole different set of friends and it’s a occasion to get together. He gets a couple in his classes each year, and in activities. For college, many of them go on to the local college, but then it’s rare to run into them. My other son is always pleasantly surprised to run into a former classmate there, and it’s usually a different one, someone he hasn’t seen in a while when he goes back there to visit. Those kids who go to the local college say it’s not an issue at all.</p>
<p>What does happen is that when you meet people, it often does not take long to establish a low degree of connection. You may not personally know the student, but you have a lot in common and may have been at the same places at the same time. That can be nice. My son who went to a far away OOS public misses that as he meets no one that way and his friends and classmates tend to do so. There will be kids who went to States at the same time, who know the same people, the same event, know the high school, Some commonality that my son just doesn’t get but would have gotten in abundance had he gone to the local school. </p>
<p>The school I go to isn’t local to my high school, but as it turned out I was one of about 10 to go to my current school (keeping in mind it’s usually 1-3 in a given year). My class in high school had around 500 students, and my university has around 26,000 undergrads based on the most recent report I could find. I’ve only run into a few of my classmates in my two years (thus far) here. </p>
<p>One was in my major and we had a lot of the same classes our first year before he wound up switching out, and now I never see him. One is in another science major and we’ve had a couple classes together in calculus and chemistry, but the lectures for those classes are so big we only saw each other once or twice in a given quarter. The third is in a completely different major and I’ve run into her by chance a couple times because we happened to have classes nearby at the same time. I haven’t seen the rest of them since coming here. Actually, to be perfectly honest I see more of one of my elementary school friends (who I hadn’t seen since around 8th grade before coming here) because he lives in the same area of town and takes the same buses as I do. Still, we just wave and occasionally exchange quick small talk before going our separate ways.</p>
<p>How often you run into people will depend on majors, with it being more likely if you’re in a smaller major with one or more of them. As I mentioned before, you might run into people who have similar lower division requirements, but a lot of those classes are so big you’re all just more faces in the crowd. Even if you do run into people from your school, there’s nothing that says you have to hang out with them or even stop to chat when you do. A friendly acknowledgement is enough in my experience, unless both of you do want to talk. Or you can choose to not even acknowledge them and they probably won’t care much, if at all.</p>
<p>Since when is meeting new people a good thing? </p>
<p>An idea is to join a student group. In my opinion/experience, you can become friends with a whole bunch of people, none of them being people you’ve met before. If you want to start fresh, stick with this organization for a while and it may replace you hanging out with your old friends all the time.</p>
<p>Awkward, a good number of my high school friends/classmates that go to the same university will always be hanging out in the same corner of the Student Union–I get to stop by and say hi every now and then. The rest of the people, I guess I see around here and there, but nobody decided to become electrical engineers nor came in with a lot of AP credits so I’ve never had class with someone from the same high school (except for someone a grade above me that is a mechanical engineer).
I see it often where people plan out their schedules to share the same classes.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Bottom line – no one cares about high school as soon as it ends. If you pass someone, you will nod, they will nod, and life goes on.</p>
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<p>I attended a university of 12,000 students 15 miles from my hometown. There were between 2 and 3 dozen students from my graduating class. Never had a class with any of them. The number of times I saw any of them over 4 years was maybe less than 10. I know I was concerned about it at the time, too. Don’t be! The few times you see someone you know, you may actually think its nice to see a familiar face.</p>
<p>I attended a huge school (UMinn). I had 2 HS classmates start with me and one friend a year ahead of me. One of the classmates was actually at the St. Paul campus, but they shared many classes via shuttle. Unplanned, I had one class with one of my classmates and the next term I had one with the other. I saw the older student in passing fairly often as our schedules crossed.</p>
<p>That being said, I didn’t really see them all that much. One of the two classmates was a close friend and we still keep in touch, but we both ran in different circles in college so we did not really hang out nearly as much as we had in HS.</p>
<p>Ultimately, it is all what you make of it.</p>
<p>Many people from my HS attend our state flagship, which has over 40,000 undergrads. Walking by one of my HS classmates unintentionally is such a rare occurrence for my friends that they’ll tell me about it.</p>
<p>At my own much smaller university (~4000 undergrads) , there is one other person from my HS. She actually lived in the same dorm as I did, but I rarely saw her. She was a year younger than I was and I hadn’t known her until she came to my college.</p>
<p>However the strangest things do happen. I ran into a HS classmate at the airport in my college city at 5AM one morning. His college was in a different state! But our city’s airport was the most convenient one for his travels. In fact, I was once on the bus in my college city, looked out the window, and saw one of my middle school classmates, who was going to a school not far from mine.</p>
<p>Not likely. My daughter was a bit hesitant about attending her college because several of her classmates were accepted and going. So far she saw them from the distance and wave at them. That’s it, she never even get together with them for coffee.</p>
<p>If you’re going into the same program as someone else, you <em>might</em> see them sometime in a class during the 4 years, especially if it’s a small program. Otherwise, don’t worry. It will be pretty easy to avoid people if you don’t want to see them. If you do want to see them, you’re going to have to go to lunch or get a coffee with them.</p>
<p>Quite a few of my HS classmates went to UT-Austin when I did. I never saw any of them, even one of my close friends!</p>
<p>On the bizarre side, though, my son was accepted as an OOS student at UT. He attended one of the many orientation sessions the summer before his freshman year, and a guy walked up to him who lives only about two miles from us - in MAINE! I couldn’t believe it.</p>