According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 32.1 out of every 1,000 live births is a set of twins: if Whitman were to match these statistics, 46 out of 1450 students would be twins. While there are a few pairs of twins who attend Whitman together, the majority separate from their sibling to come to college. Who are the twins who ventured away from their other half to attend Whitman alone? What is it like to be so far away from the person with whom they share just about everything?

Elana Congress, a sophomore, describes being a twin as “the hardest and best thing in the world.” Being so close to someone for all your life can be wonderful, she explained, but every relationship has its tensions.

“Growing up and going to the same school and having similar interests was incredibly difficult, though, because it felt like we were always competing,” Congress said in an e-mail.

Sophomore Carolyn Hart expressed a similar sentiment via e-mail when asked about her sister Margaret and their relationship growing up.

“At our high school, people always confused us or called us “twin” instead of our names, and just didn’t bother to get to know us individually,” Hart explained.

For both Hart and Congress, growing up as a twin caused slight claustrophobia at times, leading them to attend different colleges than their siblings.

“By going to separate colleges, we could ensure that we have separate identities,” said Hart.

For Congress, the decision to attend different colleges was easy.

“We always intended to study at different colleges,” she said. “In fact, we didn’t even apply to any of the same colleges in order to avoid tension when receiving acceptance and rejection letters, and to ensure that we didn’t end up at the same school.”

But for all the reasons that these girls don’t attend the same school as their twins, it must be difficult to be so far from your “best friend,” as Congress describes her sister Suzanne.

For sophomore Nate Stone, the distance is difficult, but staying in contact with his sister helps. Stone’s twin sister Caitlin attends college across the continent, at Brown University in Rhode Island.

“I miss her but it’s not too bad. I talk to her quite a bit,” Stone said.

Hart explained that with today’s technology, keeping in touch is incredibly easy.

“It’s not too hard to be apart from Margaret because of all the ways we can keep in touch: texting, Skype, Facebook,” she said.

So what is it like for these twins to visit Whitman? For the Congress sisters, Suzanne’s visit to Whitman helped cement an image of the place that she’d only heard described.

“It was great for her to get to meet the people I tell her about and see the places I refer to,” Congress said.

For Hart’s sister, the visit also helped match names and faces to description.

“[Margaret] got to meet all these people I had been talking about for the last year,” said Hart. “I value her opinion a lot, so it was good to see what she thought about the campus and my friends.”

Despite the distance, Hart and her sister, as well as many other twins at Whitman, have found ways to maintain their unique relationship. The transition from high school to college is a huge one, and being separated from such close family is even more daunting, yet phone calls, e-mails and visits have helped these twins keep in touch. Acting on their wish to develop an identity separate from their siblings’, Congress, Hart and Stone all found the move relatively easy: and just knowing that your other half is also studying for finals must make everything a little bit easier.