I am wondering where I might find statistics regarding the following questions:
(1) The number of twins who attend similar and separate colleges
(2) Understanding the decision making process that guided their college choices
(3) Finding college admission and rejection rates of twins based upon zygosity and gender
I’m a mother of boy/girl twins who attend separate colleges, 1000 miles apart from one another. My twins are very close to one another and talk / text frequently.
Having said that, that’s a huge luxury to have that ability and I would anticipate that you’d find that just like singletons, the vast majority of twins in this country go to a nearby school, driven primarily by cost, proximity to home and a major of interest. So finding out that they both attend Directional State U may not necessarily be a function of because-they’re-twins-they-wanted-to-stay-together; it may be more of a function that their choices were cost and proximity-driven and it would have been the same if they were siblings a few years apart instead of twins.
I would think that a school would want to accept both to help with yield. Parents with 2 kids at the same grade level often prefer that the kids not be far apart due to Move In issues, graduation issues, etc.
We lucked out since my kids’ schools are on very different schedules (1 semester, 1 quarter) so we never had a conflict with move-in or graduation. Their spring break has coincided 3 of the 4 years.
Depends upon the school. I know a set of identical twins for whom this was their first major separation. One went to CA, the other stayed local for college. I know a set of fraternal twins who went to the same big state U and they had totally different lives there after their freshman year. Seemed to work out fine for both sets. My nephews who are fraternal twins did not even have overlapping lists of colleges; they were so different.
I don’t know where you would find information on twins and college. I have boy/girl twins. They didn’t even apply to the same colleges, except for the safety that I insisted on (which neither is attending). They have boy/boy twin half-brothers who attend college on different coasts. There were quite a few twins in their high school graduating class and I was surprised that the majority of same gender twins attended the same college. None of the boy/girl twins did.
My friend has twin girls who both attend Stanford. They each scored 2400 on the SAT but initially one was accepted, one was deferred. The deferred twin would have happily attended another school (east coast) but wrote a nice letter to Stanford (actually quite humorous) and was accepted also. Makes things a lot easier on mom because they are both relatively close to home. They’ll never know how the initial decision was made because they basically are the same person- artists, musicians, grades, etc… Must have been a small difference in essays - who knows…
I have no help to offer with stats - my son-in-law and his identical twin went to the same college, though - WPI. Their first separation was grad school - my son-in-law went to BU and his brother went to UNC.
My son’s g/f is a twin. They chose different LACs in midwest. While they still live apart, they are in touch all the time.
My daughter’s friend’s mother has an identical twin. She and her twin started at separate colleges about 2 hours apart, but missed each other so much that one transferred to the other’s school. Of course, this was before the days of texting, email, or Skype.
I do know a set of identical girl twins who went to the same school, were roommates, joined the same sorority, lived in an apartment together, and then roomed together after college while working downtown. But they’ve always been really close. They’re fully “normal” and have outside friends, so hey, whatever works.
I confess to a little desire that my twins would wind up in the same city and share an apartment with one another. They’d have a great time. They are currently planning a spring break trip together (they are seniors). They’re really supportive of one another in general and I think it’s a really special friendship.
I have two college freshmen, not twins. They go to schools 2000 apart, and feel that’s close enough.
I’m a fraternal twin. I remember making a very deliberate/difficult decision to attend a different college than my twin sister. We had similar stats, both excellent students, and had applied to some of the same colleges. My twin was the “dominant” twin, and I felt that I needed to get away from her in order to develop my own identity. I tended to depend on her too much, though we weren’t that close since the beginning of high school (had different friends, did different activities, went to a huge high school and rarely saw each other, she always had a boyfriend, I didn’t. . .)We shared a room the whole time we were growing up, but we have never been together–except for short visits-- since we left for college. We have a friendly relationship, but not super close. We look/sound alike, but our personalities are so different–it seems unlikely that we would choose each other as friends.
I had a set of twins (both young women, identical) who lived on my hall freshman year of college. They roomed together. I believe they roomed together all four years of college.
I am an identical twin. I needed to go to a different school from my brother. We needed to establish our own identities and pursue our own interests. I don’t regret the decision at all.
But…I wish we had picked schools closer together. Our colleges were several states apart and visiting was hard. I would have enjoyed visiying, road tripping, etc.
I can’t imagine there would be statistics on this. We asked at some of the colleges if they had policies or practices. I suspect that the smaller schools will take it more into consideration than large universities (but that’s a guess).
For our kids, they did not want to go to school together, even though they are incredibly close (boy / girl). I think it was just a matter of wanting to establish and maintain their own lives independently, not only from family, but from childhood associations (not for any negative reasons, but from a sense of moving on to a new phase in life). They did apply to some of the same schools, but luckily we didn’t have to face the decision about who would go where since their top choices were different.
Having overlap with school breaks was very important and influenced decisions once results came in. Our twins did not end up nearby, but between the long breaks and facetime, they did alright!
I have no answers to any of the OP’s questions but this thread reminded me of the opening remarks made by the president of our state’s flagship university to incoming freshmen several years ago. After noting achievements and qualifications of the entering class as a whole, he went on to say that the freshman class included more than 20 sets of twins, 3 sets of triplets, and 1 set of quadruplets. Those of us who had been contemplating expenses for our singlets for the upcoming four years suddenly felt that our financial concerns were petty!
This is not something any college would track, so you will only get single or few data points from posters here.
There was a set of twins from D1’s school who applied to Yale EA. They were deferred, but were both accepted during RD. This set of twin were over the top together. They were the same outfit to school, same hairdo. When they ate candy, if one dropped it and couldn’t eat it, the other one would throw it out too. It was very bizarre. We all thought it would be good if they could go to different schools.
D2 is very good friend with a guy from her freshman dorm. It wasn’t until a year later at a dinner, I realized he had a twin brother at the school, and I didn’t even know they were twins (identical) until someone pointed it out to me. They had complete different persona that it was hard for me to believe they were twins.
I knew identical girl twins in high school. Academic superstars. They purposefully decided not to dicuss with each other their college choices (even during the application process) as they did not want to unduly influence each other. They both wound up at Yale. 
I do believe they were in separate RCs there - I don’t know if Yale gives roommate choices at all. This was in the 80s.
When my son was in nursery school, he became friends with twins who also attended. Though they were technically from the next town over, they later were on the same regional youth soccer team etc., and since they also had a sister the same age as my daughter, our families became close. Turns out, when they joined kindergarten, there were 9 other sets of twins in their kindergarten class. This was unusual for their town, and the local paper got an adorable picture for the front page on their first day of kindergarten.
One family moved out of town, but nine sets of twins graduated high school together, out of a class of ~250 or so.
One of these families will not be going to college, as they are going into their family auto-repair business. Eight pairs are going to college. Four sets are all going to Flagship State University. Two sets are attending the same liberal arts colleges as their twin, and the other two sets are going to different schools from their twin.
This is of course completely unscientific, but we are friends with one of these families, and their mom was curious enough to keep tabs. Her twin boys have been dating one of the other sets of twin girls for most of high school.