There are a lot of differences between the social atmosphere in high school and college, but the biggest difference that I have seen is the level of acceptance. In high school people tend to feel like they have to be the people that they’d been for the past eight or so years of their life. But when you enter college, on the other hand, you have the opportunity to get a fresh start and be the person you want to be. College is a time for defining and redefining yourself and norms develop around it. So when you are entering college be ready to see people change and accept that change because you will be doing the same thing.
Another thing is that you have to be your own advocate. There’s no one there to guide you and tell you what to do. It’s entirely your responsibility to create a balance between your social life and your school life. This can be really hard and often takes some trial and error. While you may be freer than ever before, remember that with great freedom comes great responsibility.
Looking back on high school, I realize that a lot of my peers cared a little bit too much about their looks and were a bit immature. Once college comes around and you become more independent and have to live (sort of) on your own, you learn a lot about yourself and what your priorities should be. You’ll begin to realize that a lot of things we all stressed over in high school are not that big a deal after all, like what everyone thinks about you or what you wear to class every day. As you grow up and mature in college you’ll begin to think about the things that really matter, and you’ll start caring more about your own wellbeing and what’s best for you. Also one thing I have noticed in college is that it doesn’t matter what grade you’re in, freshman or senior or whatever. As long as you share the same mascot and school everyone gets along. Also without the pressure of high school dances everyone seems a little bit less stressed.
I think it’s difficult to make generalizations about this because it depends a lot on the culture of your specific high school, but speaking from personal experience, I would say social norms in college are less pervasive than in high school. Because most colleges are larger than high schools and there are thousands of people on campus every day, it’s hard (pretty much impossible) to know who everyone is and what “clique” they belong to. In that sense, there are few social norms because people just hang around those that are similar to them or who they feel comfortable with – there are no expansive norms just because it is hard to have a social trend that extends throughout the whole school.
College is a lot less cliquey than high school, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your view of cliques. It’s bad in that you might find it more difficult to form strong, lasting friendships because you tend to be with a lot of different people instead of the same friends all the time. On the other hand, it’s good in the sense that it’s easier to befriend people since everyone is a lot more open and not exclusive to one group or another. There is definitely a lot less drama in college, at least in my experience. College students are mature enough to deal with their personal problems without advertising them to everyone.
While there aren’t really stereotypical cliques in college like in high school, there definitely still are exclusive friend groups, catty people, and plenty of drama. The social scene in college is by no means perfect. For example, almost everyone on my floor in my residence hall is friends with one another, but I’m not a part of that clique. I made other friends and simply chose not to be a part of that group. And while there is still drama (because we’re all still humans and drama just naturally happens), because college campuses are so big, people tend to just forget about things really quickly or never even hear about them in the first place. People have so much to do in college that they’re usually too busy worrying about their own lives to care about your personal drama.
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