Indiana University student culture

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have two kids there. Both are thriving there in different ways. It's definitely a big place that can be anything you want it to be. It's also a big place where a kid can feel isolated. As worrying parents, we were nervous about our daughter falling into that latter category for the first few weeks. But she found her people and is having a good experience.

My son is in the marching band and is just having a blast. He was a high school band kid and, joining the Marching Hundred, he basically had a built in social group, and he goes to a ton of sporting events. (We watch for him on TV at the basketball games.) He's definitely drinking underage off-campus, but from all I can tell, he's going far less crazy than I did at his age.

My daughter didn't join the band, so was a little slower to fall into a social group. I don't think IU necessarily does a great job with orientation activities. They have a lot of them, but they don't require them and don't seem to give the kids much a push to interact. The first week, I think my daughter went to several first year student events where she wasn't really sure how to break the ice (or was too nervous.)

But, she's in the Collins dorm and has a few art classes, so she fell in with an "arty" crowd that seems to suit her.

There's definitely an active Greek community in Bloomington, but my kids aren't part of it. Near as I can tell, that's not a problem for either the people who like Greek life or the people who don't want to be part of a fraternity or sorority. Again, it's a big place.

My DS is seriously considering it too, and this is the one thing that concerns me the most about IU or any big state school for that matter. How do kids from out of state make friends and start to feel at home? I can see it being fun if 100 of your friends from a big public high school in Indiana are there with you, but OOS kids don't have that advantage.

[Anonymous]

IU is huge. In state kids aren't flocking together in strange high school/ regional friend groups. Kids who are willing to engage with others and be friendly will find friends regardless where they come from. Most kids want to branch out and meet new people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have two kids there. Both are thriving there in different ways. It's definitely a big place that can be anything you want it to be. It's also a big place where a kid can feel isolated. As worrying parents, we were nervous about our daughter falling into that latter category for the first few weeks. But she found her people and is having a good experience.

My son is in the marching band and is just having a blast. He was a high school band kid and, joining the Marching Hundred, he basically had a built in social group, and he goes to a ton of sporting events. (We watch for him on TV at the basketball games.) He's definitely drinking underage off-campus, but from all I can tell, he's going far less crazy than I did at his age.

My daughter didn't join the band, so was a little slower to fall into a social group. I don't think IU necessarily does a great job with orientation activities. They have a lot of them, but they don't require them and don't seem to give the kids much a push to interact. The first week, I think my daughter went to several first year student events where she wasn't really sure how to break the ice (or was too nervous.)

But, she's in the Collins dorm and has a few art classes, so she fell in with an "arty" crowd that seems to suit her.

There's definitely an active Greek community in Bloomington, but my kids aren't part of it. Near as I can tell, that's not a problem for either the people who like Greek life or the people who don't want to be part of a fraternity or sorority. Again, it's a big place.

My DS is seriously considering it too, and this is the one thing that concerns me the most about IU or any big state school for that matter. How do kids from out of state make friends and start to feel at home? I can see it being fun if 100 of your friends from a big public high school in Indiana are there with you, but OOS kids don't have that advantage.

My one friend’s son had this experience. Really hard to break into the social groups.

The comment about “one of the top frats” is kind of weird. Are they ranked? That seems.. gross.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have a kid from the DC area who is not attending Kelley? What do they like about the school? What other than the Greek system has been hard?

DC and I are going for an admitted student days this spring, and want to hear the good and the bad.

Here's the bad (there's lots of good in the above comments!): I know two African-American boys from this area who went there and then left (one after freshman year one after sophomore year).. they didn't find their group and felt like everyone was from Indiana and it's a kind of white monoculture. Very frat-heavy.

Well for every story, there's an opposite one. One of my kid's best friends (suite mate) at IU is a freshman, black kid. He just made one of the top fraternity houses. The rest of the suite mates (white boys) didn't get into any frat.

I have heard from 2 different DC-area families that their son struggled socially at IU because he didn’t make it into a frat. These are both mainstream, social kids. What is the deal?

[Anonymous]

As one poster put it, it's a big place. There is room for everybody. About a quarter of undergrads might be in frats and sororities, but that leaves an awful lot who aren't. It's not the most diverse place in the world, but not exactly a white monoculture either, and like a lot of state flagships, a high percentage of people are from out of state, if not out of the country.

Bloomington is a great college town. The real shame is the Republican state government slowly destroying the university.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have a kid from the DC area who is not attending Kelley? What do they like about the school? What other than the Greek system has been hard?

DC and I are going for an admitted student days this spring, and want to hear the good and the bad.

Here's the bad (there's lots of good in the above comments!): I know two African-American boys from this area who went there and then left (one after freshman year one after sophomore year).. they didn't find their group and felt like everyone was from Indiana and it's a kind of white monoculture. Very frat-heavy.

Well for every story, there's an opposite one. One of my kid's best friends (suite mate) at IU is a freshman, black kid. He just made one of the top fraternity houses. The rest of the suite mates (white boys) didn't get into any frat.

I have heard from 2 different DC-area families that their son struggled socially at IU because he didn’t make it into a frat. These are both mainstream, social kids. What is the deal?

It gets way better after the first semester of freshman year. The boys have to make friends with other boys in the dorm and clubs. Tons of socializing happens in the dorms, going to football games and tailgating, watching games together at restaurants, playing cards, golf, etc. By sophomore year, many are in apartments and they're partying there too. They can go to some frat parties if they have friends in them. One or two of the bars seem to be lenient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have a kid from the DC area who is not attending Kelley? What do they like about the school? What other than the Greek system has been hard?

DC and I are going for an admitted student days this spring, and want to hear the good and the bad.

Here's the bad (there's lots of good in the above comments!): I know two African-American boys from this area who went there and then left (one after freshman year one after sophomore year).. they didn't find their group and felt like everyone was from Indiana and it's a kind of white monoculture. Very frat-heavy.

Well for every story, there's an opposite one. One of my kid's best friends (suite mate) at IU is a freshman, black kid. He just made one of the top fraternity houses. The rest of the suite mates (white boys) didn't get into any frat.

I have heard from 2 different DC-area families that their son struggled socially at IU because he didn’t make it into a frat. These are both mainstream, social kids. What is the deal?

The vast majority of students at Indiana are not in fraternities or sororities. Are those 25,000 undergrads struggling socially because they are not in that system? I suppose if you wanted in one, and found yourself not in one, you could feel differently, and you would have spent all that time and energy on getting in one instead of doing a ton of other things.

But if you never bothered with it in the first place and instead got involved with some other activities, and there is no end of things to do on campus or in Bloomington, you would hardly be aware that fraternities even exist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD is junior there. From OOS, into progressive politics and sustainability, not into Greek life (and before choosing IU she checked with some recent alums to confirm Greeks orgs aren't the dominant force of social life there -- and they haven't been). She liked the campus, liked the programs in her fields, liked the range of options. She's having a fantastic time. It's a huge school and it seems like to offset that they have a lot of smaller-sized groups and clubs as an initial way to meet people. She opted to live in a "living/learning" dorm that focuses on sustainability and that's provided many of her closest friends (but she's made friends outside that too -- in the Kelley business school, in some sororities and fraternities, etc). She also joined a few clubs freshman year - isn't as active in them now but again it was a good way to meet people. Bloomington is wonderful and offers a lot of dining and entertainment options; the performing arts programs bring a lot of inexpensive events to campus; Big Ten sports are not really a primary focus for her but she likes the energy it brings to the campus and she and friends attends a couple of times a semester. She and friends get up to Indianapolis for concerts from time to time, and have road-tripped to places like Chicago and Cincinnati and Nashville. Her friends are serious students (okay, one exception) and she is too -- actually, she's probably more serious about her studies than she ever was before. Over five semesters she's has had one meh professor and has liked or loved all the others. She studied in Europe last semester - not in a generic "Americans abroad" drinking and sightseeing program but in an honors exchange program IU has with a leading European uni (which I mention only to underscore that IU has some great programs that smaller schools won't).

Any surprises? Her best friends are from Indiana and they are smart and hardworking and well-travelled (because we didn't know what to expect). The IU campus and Bloomington absolutely seem like a typical university town (or small city) bubble consumed by the usual student passions and insulated from a lot of state- and national-level politics (because she wasn't sure if going to school in a pretty red state would feel different from the blue states she's more familiar with). IU doesn't feel isolated (Bloomington is an hour from Indianapolis, which isn't NY but is a real city). 'Midwest nice' is actually a thing, not just hype -- with the kids, with the administration, with the people in town.

We really hadn't known what to expect - had no prior connection with the school except some grown family friends whose eyes would tear up whenever they talked about their time in Bloomington. But she liked the programs and loved the campus when she visited, and that IU seems to look for reasons to accept rather than reject applicants. It's vastly surpassed her expectations (and ours to the extent that matters). I obviously can't categorically promise every student will have a great time and find their niche there, but it seems to offer as good a shot at that as anywhere, and DD's experience (since she's definitely not a sorority/business school 'type' of IU cliches) tends to confirm that. Hope this helps.

All the tri-state area kids we know that went are spoiled, rich and Greek...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD is junior there. From OOS, into progressive politics and sustainability, not into Greek life (and before choosing IU she checked with some recent alums to confirm Greeks orgs aren't the dominant force of social life there -- and they haven't been). She liked the campus, liked the programs in her fields, liked the range of options. She's having a fantastic time. It's a huge school and it seems like to offset that they have a lot of smaller-sized groups and clubs as an initial way to meet people. She opted to live in a "living/learning" dorm that focuses on sustainability and that's provided many of her closest friends (but she's made friends outside that too -- in the Kelley business school, in some sororities and fraternities, etc). She also joined a few clubs freshman year - isn't as active in them now but again it was a good way to meet people. Bloomington is wonderful and offers a lot of dining and entertainment options; the performing arts programs bring a lot of inexpensive events to campus; Big Ten sports are not really a primary focus for her but she likes the energy it brings to the campus and she and friends attends a couple of times a semester. She and friends get up to Indianapolis for concerts from time to time, and have road-tripped to places like Chicago and Cincinnati and Nashville. Her friends are serious students (okay, one exception) and she is too -- actually, she's probably more serious about her studies than she ever was before. Over five semesters she's has had one meh professor and has liked or loved all the others. She studied in Europe last semester - not in a generic "Americans abroad" drinking and sightseeing program but in an honors exchange program IU has with a leading European uni (which I mention only to underscore that IU has some great programs that smaller schools won't).

Any surprises? Her best friends are from Indiana and they are smart and hardworking and well-travelled (because we didn't know what to expect). The IU campus and Bloomington absolutely seem like a typical university town (or small city) bubble consumed by the usual student passions and insulated from a lot of state- and national-level politics (because she wasn't sure if going to school in a pretty red state would feel different from the blue states she's more familiar with). IU doesn't feel isolated (Bloomington is an hour from Indianapolis, which isn't NY but is a real city). 'Midwest nice' is actually a thing, not just hype -- with the kids, with the administration, with the people in town.

We really hadn't known what to expect - had no prior connection with the school except some grown family friends whose eyes would tear up whenever they talked about their time in Bloomington. But she liked the programs and loved the campus when she visited, and that IU seems to look for reasons to accept rather than reject applicants. It's vastly surpassed her expectations (and ours to the extent that matters). I obviously can't categorically promise every student will have a great time and find their niche there, but it seems to offer as good a shot at that as anywhere, and DD's experience (since she's definitely not a sorority/business school 'type' of IU cliches) tends to confirm that. Hope this helps.

All the tri-state area kids we know that went are spoiled, rich and Greek...

Tri state meaning NY/NJ/CT? Or DMV?

How big a sample size is this, 5 kids? What makes them “spoiled?”, any more than any other OOS public school

[Anonymous]

Check out the book "Paying for the Party" by Elizabeth Armstrong. It focuses on social dynamics that played out amongst different strata of IU students. Written by social scientists embedded on campus over a period of time. It isn't the whole picture, but gives a lot of interesting info.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Check out the book "Paying for the Party" by Elizabeth Armstrong. It focuses on social dynamics that played out amongst different strata of IU students. Written by social scientists embedded on campus over a period of time. It isn't the whole picture, but gives a lot of interesting info.

That looks truly fascinating and shows how important it is to go to college with a good sense of priorities. It doesn't seem to say much for the Greek system either.

[Anonymous]

How is it in the winter there? Huge campus- walking through the campus in winter must be a pain.

[Anonymous]

Beautiful place. A creek running through it. Well run & clean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is it in the winter there? Huge campus- walking through the campus in winter must be a pain.

It’s warmer than Purdue. Look at the monthly weather and compare to DC.