As you enter your freshman year of Tufts, you may occasionally hear about a strange entity known as the NESCAC, the sports conference of which Tufts is a part. While it won’t be long before most of your class gives up caring about our sports teams, it will be useful to know all you can about the schools that make up the NESCAC, some of which you probably have never heard of, or at least knew nothing about. You will want to know which school’s students eat their pizza with a knife and fork, and you will definitely want to know which school holds their Spring Fling in December.

Without further ado, I give you the 2016-17 New England Small College Athletic Conference Power Rankings.*

11. Trinity College The college and its surrounding area are a living study in income inequality. If you feel that the student body is too elitist and preppy, there is a vibrant homeless scene right down the block. By the way, who thought having an odd number of schools was a good idea?

10. Bowdoin College Bowdoin plummeted down these rankings since the last nonexistent edition. The reason? Their administration now ranks somewhere between Russia and North Korea on the fascism scale.

9. Hamilton College You might think it has something to do with the musical, but it actually got its name by being located on the outhouse where Alexander Hamilton used to take shits while going on camping trips.

7. Tie: Bates College & Colby College No one really knows anything about these two schools. It is rumored that their dining halls serve grizzly bear liver, but no Jumbo has been brave enough to venture there on their own since the great Tony Ocanom in the 1970s

6. Connecticut College Um, it’s in Connecticut, and it’s a college. It is a 5-time winner of the Princeton Review Most Boring College Award.

4. Tie: Williams College & Amherst College If you know any famous old politicians or businessmen, their most spoiled and annoying child probably went to one of these schools.

3. Wesleyan University It has a reputation for being a strange college, but they really make some excellent peyote here. To read more, go to https://www.tuftszamboni.com/?s=peyote

2. Middlebury For some reason, Middlebury just has a nice ring to it. I like the name. It’s like you are in the middle of a berry, but not really. Middlebury seems like a place where your cool second cousin would go, don’t ask me why. I don’t think I even have any cool second cousins.

1. Tufts University Let’s be real here. It’s the only full-fledged university in the NESCAC. And what other school has Tony Monaco, Danilo Marchesini, Tony Monaco, the Zamboni, and Tony Monaco?

*All of this information may or may not be true