Emmanuel College, Boston
Private Catholic Institution

Distance from home: 1,183 miles NE
Setting: On the outskirts of downtown Boston, two blocks from Fenway Park and surrounded by diehard Red Sox fans. Also just a walking distance to Boston University, a subway ride to Boston College and close to Harvard Medical School.
Admission difficulty: Medium
Tuition: near $40,000
Size: around 1,600 students
Typical student: Muscle men who work out just to cover themselves with North Face jackets, hipsters, high schooly cliques. More than half of the student population seems to be from Massachusetts or the surrounding states.
Fashion: Prepare for charcoal tones during a majority of the year. On the plus side, Florida girls can finally wear Ugg boots without their feet sweating.
Pros: Emmanuel has a gated campus for a cozy campus feel in a large metropolitan city. The subway — deemed “T” by Bostonians — takes you basically anywhere, so a car’s unnecessary. Emmanuel students can take classes at other Colleges of the Fenway members like Wentworth, Wheelock, Simmons, Massachusetts College of Art, and Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences. Also, tons of Boston attractions are discounted for students.
Cons: Because of its jacked-up security policies, living at Emmanuel is like living back at home, except checking in with the front desk instead of parents to make sure a friend can come over. Not only does the school know who you are with, but they know when you miss class because roll is taken, just like high school. By second semester you see the same faces over and over — not an easy escape if you break up with your boyfriend over Christmas break. Since Emmanuel is a dry campus, the parties are always off-campus, which is a hassle when there’s snow slush everywhere. Plus, the T stops at 12:30 a.m., and we all know no college kid goes home before 12:30.
Warning to out-of-state students: You’ll be the only one on campus during long weekends since about 95 percent of the school goes home to their families in Boston or the surrounding area.

Kimberly Sears is a graduate of Tampa Preparatory. She spent one year at Emmanuel and is now a sophomore at the University of Miami.