Admission difficulty: Medium

School size: Medium

Tuition: About $35,000/year for non-residents

Demographics: White, liberal, middle class, Red Sox fans. Fewer hippies than the University of Vermont, fewer stoners than the University of Massachusetts, fewer preps than UConn. You will meet very few people who don't own at least one piece of L.L. Bean or North Face apparel.

Most famous alum: Mike O'Malley, the former host of Nickelodeon's G.U.T.S.

Pros: Perfect location, within an hour of the beach, the mountains and Boston; dining hall food is above-average; lots of study abroad opportunities.

Cons: Wind chill; no particularly standout academic program; most intellectual debates center around the differences between Natty Ice and Keystone Light.

Social scene: Half the campus is commuter, so it can get dead on weekends, especially in the winter. Most parties are at off-campus apartments, the Greek scene is small, but active.

Sports: Hockey is king, with the men's and women's teams consistently in the national championship picture (very few are actually won, however). The rest of the teams are in perpetual states of "rebuilding". You'll learn to say a lot of nasty things about Maine.

Campus and town: Durham is mainly UNH, and the campus is walkable. Townies sometimes complain, but students have only burned down one house in the past five years. Best school to attend if you are a fan of foliage. Durham has five pizza places, all mediocre. There are a handful of bars, and nightlife is only a bus ride to Portsmouth or a train ride to Boston away.

National attention: The location of many candidate visits and at least one debate during national elections.

Quick fact: Mascot is the Wildcat, an animal not native to New Hampshire. The runner-up mascot was the Unicorn.

John Wayne Ferguson is a 2009 graduate of the University of New Hampshire.