Indiana University - Bloomington

Date: Feb 02 2012
Major: Business - Management and Administration (This Major's Salary over time)
I was only at IU for a semester and honestly I really hated it. I had a big problem with how spread out the residence halls were on campus - it was hard to meet people outside your residence hall, and people often are stuck up and biased only towards their "region." There are three options: Northwest, known as the party area, Southwest, known as the quieter side of campus, and Central, considered to be a mixture of both.

Coming from the Chicagoland area, I knew being in the middle of nowhere in Indiana would be a big adjustment. However, I underestimated how big of a change it would be - you are truly in the middle of nowhere - once you get outside of campus, you will see nothing but farmland, and you are nearly an hour from the nearest expressway, and even further from Indianapolis. I did not find people to be very friendly at IU - I went through some classes without really talking in depth to anybody. I tried to start conversation, but more often than not, people wanted to keep to themselves.

The party scene is pretty much as advertised, and similar to other campuses, there is massive segregation between those in Greek life and independents. The school was also nearly 85% white, something I never got used to in my time there.

IU is pretty much exclusively people from Indiana and rich kids from the suburbs of Chicago, most of whom were rejected at University of Illinois. Also, expect to be in massive classes your freshman year. All of my classes were 100-200 people, other than one that was about 40 people. It's a big adjustment coming from high school. In terms of academics, I feel like Kelley is pretty over hyped, but the bottom line is its a solid business school. Also home to one of the best music schools, so you'll see some rather interesting characters if you're near the school of music in the southwest neighborhood.

Overall, IU is not for everybody. If you are from out of state and looking for a great college experience, I would not recommend IU. Its out of state tuition is incredibly high and its just not worth it. It's a very segregated and non-diverse campus - look at Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, etc, instead.

However, if you're from Indiana and used to being in the middle of nowhere in this god awful state, its definitely for you. You'll feel right at home.