Houghton College

That I've experienced so far, the professors are very nice.

The food here is okay. Some of it is pretty good quality, some average or below. There's only 2 places to eat on campus and 3 places to eat off campus (pizza place, subway, Chinese restaurant) in the surrounding town. Despite giving lots of options in the dining hall, it gets cyclical and repetitive after a while. they serve ice cream in the dining hall every lunch and dinner (16 flavors hard-serve and 3 flavors soft-serve. Includes sprinkles, cones, and some toppings). Also the dining hall is buffet style.

They have some but not a whole lot of extracurriculars.

Library is closed on Sundays and has limited hours on Saturdays, which can be annoying.

This campus is literally out in the middle of nowhere. The surrounding town has maybe 500 people. The nearest store is dollar general and that's a 5 min drive north. The nearest Wal-Mart is either 35 mins north (Warsaw) or 45 mins southwest (Olean). Also not much entertainment off-campus nearby.

If you like the outdoors, there's lots of trees and wilderness here, some hiking trails on campus, and Letchworth State Park is nearby (however a car is necessary to get there). You can't turn your head here without seeing trees, it's very rural.

The campus itself isn't really aesthetically pleasing. It's nice in the summer, but you don't see that for very long. It's cold between October and April here, and there's snow for most of that duration. Cold means between 10-30 degrees Fahrenheit. It doesn't look pretty in the winter. Also the buildings are structurally nice but start to look blan really quickly (they're all designed the same and all the same shade of brown/gray).

Having such a small student body, you tend to see the same faces over and over again.

They say they're a religious school, and boy do they stick to that. They have mandatory chapel services (MWF 11:00-11:45am). They scan your ID to make sure you were there. It's mandatory to attend two-thirds of these chapels each semester. It's possible to leave undetected and skip, but if they catch you they will punish you. As a part of their gen-ed curriculum you must take at least 3 bible/christianity classes (3 total not 3 each). Teachers can and will talk about christianity or god or the bible in class, even if it's an unrelated subject (ex calculus or chemistry). Some teachers will even pray before class. Lots of (though not all) students are very openly christian as well.

Laundry is free.

Having such a tiny campus and mostly residential students, they don't cancel classes. It was once -27 degrees Fahrenheit windchill (-10 degrees Fahrenheit without windchill) and they didn't cancel classes.

There is very little diversity in the student body. Mostly middle class white kids.

Also if you're used to lots of 4 day weeks in high school (like getting presidents day off or Columbus day or whatever off), say goodbye to that. They rarely have days off like that here. This semester (spring 2019) there are 3 breaks total. We had an 8 week grind from January-March, only getting MLK Jr. day off. Then 1 week off in March then a 5 day weekend in April and that's it.