LEWISTON — Bates College freshmen Alex Parker didn’t have far to drive when it was time to move to college. His parents live less than a mile from campus.

“We’ve talked about how they’re going to give me some space,” Parker said Tuesday, a day before classes began. “I’ll visit when I’m ready.”

Three years ago, he would have laughed if someone told him he’d be going to college in Lewiston, Parker said. “I would have said, ‘No, I’m going out of state.’” But after visiting Bates last year, he applied.

So did fellow freshmen Mekae Hyde, Asha Mahamud, Allaina Murphy and Naima Qambi, who like Parker are 2011 graduates of local high schools.

“I don’t think I could find a better balance anywhere else of everything: diversity, athletics, academics, fun, seriousness,” Murphy said.

Even though Bates is among the nation’s most expensive colleges — tuition, room and board total $55,300 this year — the local students said Bates is generous with financial aid, making it possible for them to attend.

The college held its convocation Tuesday, marking the beginning of the year, and welcomed 506 freshmen. In the Class of 2015 are 54 students from Maine, including the five from Lewiston-Auburn.

Director of Admission Leigh Weisenburger said Bates has worked harder in recent years to build community relations and attract the interest of local high school students.

One way Bates did that was by increasing ties to local high schools, “making sure guidance counselors know where we are, what Bates is all about. Having those lines of communication open,” Weisenburger said.

She said another way was boosting the number of students who volunteer in the community through service learning projects based at the Harward Center for Community Partnerships on the Bates campus.

Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert said Bates students help local kids with homework at housing projects and pitch in at the downtown Trinity Jubilee Center, which runs a soup kitchen and food pantry, among other services.

Since Bates College Interim President Nancy Cable came on board last year, “the college has reached out to us as a city,” Gilbert said. “We have lunch periodically and exchange ideas. When you know each other on a first-name basis, it’s so much simpler to accomplish whatever you need.”

Having five freshmen from Lewiston-Auburn is respectable, Gilbert said. “Five is 10 percent of the (freshmen) population from Maine. It’s not easy to get into Bates. And then there’s the cost. We’re not an affluent community.” Among the five local freshmen are two Somali students, “which is a first, and a plus,” Gilbert said.

During Tuesday’s convocation, student body president Cosmin Ghita welcomed the freshmen, saying one fact of their next four years is “NO PARENTS!”

“You choose when, where, how, with whom to go out, work out, study,” Ghita said. “Enticing, we know. But it will be quite the ride, trust me on that.”

Bates College is like a car dealer, supplying them with a vehicle for their four-year trip, he said. “But Bates will not drive you. You are the one driving the car and you are responsible for getting to your own destination,” Ghita said. “Bates really is what you make of it.”

Keynote speaker, author and sociology Professor Francesco Duina recommended that the freshmen not spend their years at Bates as if they were running aimlessly on life’s treadmill.

If they spend their four years well, with lots of self-examining, thoughtful “unsettling questions and useful answers,” they will be ready at graduation, and for whatever comes next, a simple “unfolding of yourself.”

Freshmen orientation began Aug. 29. Classes begin today.

“I can’t wait,” said Naima Qambi, who graduated from Edward Little High School in Auburn. “I’m sick of orientation. I want to start school.”

Hyde and Mahamud graduated from Lewiston High School; Murphy and Parker from St. Dom’s Academy in Auburn.

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Bates by the numbers:

2011-12 enrollment: 1,908

Freshmen class: 506, 54 from Maine, 5 graduated from Lewiston-Auburn high schools. Of the 506 freshmen, 31 are the first in their families to go to college.

Annual cost (tuition, room and board to attend Bates: $55,300.

Average Bates grant to students: $37,317.