What is the name of the fictional college in Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History'?

The fictional college in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is Hampden College. Tartt places the elite liberal-arts school in Vermont, where narrator Richard Papen joins a tightly controlled group of Classics students taught by the charismatic professor Julian Morrow.

Hampden is more than a backdrop: its secluded campus, selective social circles, and worship of classical culture help create the novel’s atmosphere of privilege and moral isolation. The story follows six students whose fascination with ancient Greek ideas contributes to a murder and its aftermath, making the college central to both the plot and the book’s themes.

Readers sometimes choose Bennington College because Hampden was strongly inspired by it. Tartt attended Bennington from 1982 to 1986, and biographical accounts have connected elements of the fictional college and its characters to people and experiences there. However, Bennington is the real institution; Hampden College is the novel’s canonical fictional name. Hampshire College and Camden College are not the answer.