"Is Tufts Too Small?"
Frequently asked on my campus tours and a question I pondered when I toured as a prospective student, “Is Tufts too small?” doesn’t have a short answer.
From my experience in my year and a half here, it can be consolidated to this: it depends on the situation.
The most accurate way to describe the student body size is not in terms of “5500 undergraduates” because numbers can be ambiguous, but rather by the scenario Tufts students know well: regardless of the event, class, show, party, or meeting on campus, there will always be a familiar face and a friend to meet.
Admittedly, at times, I run into people I would rather not see—that’s just a fact of life at a medium-sized school. But for every unsavory encounter, I’ll have at least a dozen positive ones like running into friends on my way to class, having a classmate pick my notebook up off the floor, or having an unexpected conversation with someone I haven’t seen in weeks.
Regardless of a student’s unique passion at Tufts, there will be a place to thrive or explore. Whether it’s miming, tap dancing, promoting universal healthcare, bhangra, electric cars, education for the incarcerated, etc. there are organizations that help Tufts go from simply a campus to a community. The beauty in this aspect of Tufts is every student’s circles differ and there will always be a community to be found.
My experiences at Tufts have been shaped by the people I’ve met (facilitated by Tufts’ medium-sized student body) and the events I attend: friends’ track meets, mime shows, tap performances, acapella events, hockey games, and open mic nights. Although I go into Boston a few times a month and occasionally to other college campuses, there’s always enough happening on campus that if I didn’t want to leave, I could do so easily and still maintain a thriving social life.
Touring colleges as a prospective student, I encountered schools where I knew that I would outgrow their size within a year or two. Others were so overwhelmingly bustling or sprawling that I couldn’t imagine trekking thirty minutes in the snow to class. At Tufts, my longest walk to class is fifteen minutes from my dorm, but the average clocks in at about seven minutes. Not too shabby...
For me, Tufts' size has been like Goldilocks: not too big, not too small, but just right.