The 5 Groups of Friends You'll Meet in College

Chynna Mela is a senior journalism student at Temple University and an SC Campus Representative. She can usually be found planning her fall wedding to Harry Styles, attempting to become the female version of Perez Hilton, or eating peanut butter straight from the jar. See more posts from her here.

So you’re entering college as a single pringle. No, I don’t mean absent of a significant other, bae, boo-thang, or whatever else you kids are calling it these days. You’re entering college without FRIENDS. You have plenty of friends at home, but at your new big bad college you know no one. It’s totally fine. In fact in most cases it’s better to come to college without knowing anyone. You can be anyone you want to be and leave your awkward high school years behind you. If you’re in the friend shopping business here are a few groups of friends you are bound to come across in college. Warning: Some you will definitely want to avoid.

The Adventurers: Inspired by The Goonies

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I’m not saying that at some point during your college experience you will meet a group of friends searching for hidden treasure around campus. Well, you could. The type of adventurers I am talking about have a bit of FOMO on every campus except theirs and they can’t sit still. This weekend they are packing green t-shirts and a bottle of Jameson for State Patty’s at Penn State University. In a few weeks they’ll be dominating the Scranton, PA scene for Parade Day. They have an unbelievable college party passport. This group of friends is most likely male dominated with one or two girls that they are extremely protective over, so don’t even attempt to step in. If you are one of their roommates you’ve hit the mother load because I assure you they’ll NEVER be there. Finally, the adventurers are probably too old for their year. They most likely took a gap year in between high school (they absolutely graduated together) and college to drive around the United States in a beat up blue minivan to see “the world”. Once they graduate college they’ll realize that they haven’t seen ANY of the world and they will be trading in their minivan for a set of passports. Bon Voyage America and hello gap year number two.

The Forever Friends: Inspired by One Tree Hill

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They are a group of 7 from the same very, very small town. Three girls, four boys, and they know absolutely everything about each other. They’ve all dated each other, each other’s siblings, and they’ve most likely lived with each other at some point (at least one of them comes from a broken home). They have enough ancient drama to stretch from here to the very top of the Great Wall of China, but they aren’t vocal about their problems either. They keep to themselves, and only talk about each other to each other. Don’t bother trying to become friends with them either. Sure, they’ll let you sit with them in the dining hall, but you will never be one of them. The forever friends are also more well rounded than your high school valedictorian’s resume. One of them is a musician. A spectacular athlete. An artist. A brainiac. Admire them quickly, though. Only one of them will actually stick around to graduate college and the others will drop out to “follow their dreams”. They will be annoyingly supportive of each other, and they will be annoyingly successful in achieving their dreams.

The Semi-Famous: Inspired by the casts of Laguna Beach and Summer Break

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This one is tricky because it can bend a lot of ways. To put it simply: this group of BFFs did something shy of spectacular during high school and they are holding onto it for dear life. They either starred in a b-list TV show, their high school was famous or won a mega contest, one of them was on My Super Sweet 16, won battle of the bands, or had their own cheerleading documentary show. Please note that you don’t actually go to school with all of them. Just one. They’re desperate to be their own person and break out of their hometown mold, and to escape the self created drama that follows them everywhere. If you go to school on the East coast your chances of meeting them increases significantly because they are probably from Cali and want to “get away”. However, by Christmas break they’ll be back to California and applying to schools there because they thought they wanted to “break out of the bubble”, but they just missed the beach and their friends too much. They’ll have to break their lease before they move back home, too, because they absolutely didn’t live in a dorm, but in an apartment off campus. P.S. These are the ONLY majors they will chose: film, fashion design, music production, entrepreneurship, marketing. That’s it.

The Friends: Inspired by Friends

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These are THE friends, and they are living their best college life. Everyone should strive to be one of the Friends. It’s a group of eight, and they didn’t know each other until move in day. They live in a co-ed dorm across from each other, and on move in day the four boys walked across to introduce themselves to the girls and a beautiful friendship began. A few of them hooked up with each other in the beginning, but then they decided it was gross and just want to be friends. They’ll laugh about the crushes they had on each other in the beginning, but by the end of senior year two of them will confess their love for each other and will attempt to sneak around for a bit (everyone else knows). They get married, and the wedding party is the two dorm rooms smushed together. They all have classes with each other, and they have each other’s back as if they grew up together. On graduation day a photographer snaps a shot of them linking arms and smiling at each other and it ends up being on the cover of next year’s admission’s catalog. They didn’t celebrate graduation with their families, but with each other at their favorite campus bar ordering each other too many drinks and laughing at their favorite memories.

The Mean Girls: Inspired by Mean Girls

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I’m sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but yes, they do still exist in college. The silver lining, though, is that no one follows them around or worships them like in high school. Actually, everyone hates them. They came to college in a trio and managed to find one of the only three person rooms on campus. Within three months one of them decides to follow her artsy side and splits from the rest once she is shunned for being a “hipster freak”. The other two drown their sorrows in celery covered in ranch (or maybe cheese fries if she wants to lose three pounds on a low carb diet) in the dining hall while ignoring their public relation’s homework. One of the remaining two eventually finds a hottie boyfriends that she spends all her time with, and the duo splits. Life lesson #24: The Mean Girls never last.