Colorado State University - Fort Collins

Date: Dec 22 2009
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
One piece of advice I wish I had gotten before transferring to CSU:

You will love this school if you are white. It seems this campus is very open to white kids from all walks of life.

But it's an open fact CSU has difficulty recruiting and maintaining a racially diverse student body. It doesn't help that Fort Collins has a population that is over 90% white. Or that it's northern, neighboring town, Laporte, is home to a major White Supremacist church.

I've found that many of the students on campus are from small towns or suburban backgrounds where the demographics are mostly the same as Fort Collins. It shows. It seems to take my classmates a longer time to "warm up" to me than it does for them to instantly befriend the other white kids sitting around me in lecture halls.

Then there are the kids who are obsessed with "social justice" and race and whatnot. Since they also tend to be from non-diverse backgrounds, it's like the blind leading the blind up here. They tend to demonstrate the same subtle biases and preferences as everyone else.

Though I've had a few enjoyable classes and good professors, I feel short- changed by this unspoken barrier between myself, the majority of my classmates and the town. If I had to do it all over again, I would have chosen to go to Metro or UCD, since I've been deprived of all the social advantages of "going away" for college.

If you're an "activist" type and enjoy butting heads with people, you might like it here- there's plenty of work to do. If you just want to enjoy your college days and mingle with a diverse crowd, without constantly feeling the need to prove you belong, go to Metro or UCD. Those schools probably even have better academics than CSU.