Boston University Top Questions

Very active and large Jewish population. Mostly white, Indian, or asian. BU very accepting of all religions and sexual orientations. I feel very out of place at BU (from a small town, nature-loving, middle-class). Everyone is very friendly, though. Most students are from NY, NJ, Mass, or CA. Lots of pre-med students. BU has a good seven year medical program. Lots of poli sci, IR majors. Frighteningly rich kids!

BU = BE YOU. This is taken quite literally, and you'll see a little bit of everything on campus -- gays/lesbians/transgendered, punks, preps, snobs, anime, Euro, blacks, whites, hispanics and literally everything in between. This makes for a rather liberal atmosphere. As I mentioned, SMG kids are snobby and think they have the best program at BU -- really they just have the best building. The SMG sluts, as I like to call them, are some of the most obnoxious people on campus. The thing about BU, however, is that even though there is a huge number of obnoxious, rich, fake-tanned, Mac-using, Starbucks-drinking, New Yorker/ New Jersey-type people here, there are also thousands of other people that you can meet. The size really allows almost anyone to find their niche.

BU has a very diverse community, a very large gay community, and people representing an extremely wide range of regions, countries and ethnicities. So you can always find your niche, but at the same time you're sure to come in close contact with all kinds of people from different backgrounds. I dont think BU has a general 'BU student" label: there are the nerdy nerds, the preps, the alternative rock kids, the hard rock kids, the religious students, the average students. I think anyone who can fit in in a large, diverse city can fit in at BU. Most people wear some variation of sweatpants/comfortable jeans to class, even though there is a significant minority comprising of both male and female students who come into an 8am class in the middle of January with styled hair and perfectly matching, latest fashion clothes. Even though there is a lot of interaction and tolerance among different cultural, social and relgious groups on campus, people generally have more firends who belong to the group closest to the one they are used to. However,I think this trend is not significant enough to deter people from making new friendships. The four tables of students: The really big, loud and diverse table comprising of a single floor of freshmen that just get along unbelievably well - making a date with 8-15 people to have a dinner at the dinning hall is an every day thing to them The second table is a group of a few students, often science majors, who always look like they are cramming for finals The third table is a group of tall, skinny boys dressed in skin tight jeans and dark sneakers. Before entering the dinning hall, they stand outside in the cold for 20 minutes, chain smoking and laughting loudly. At the last table there are usually two or more friends who live in different dorms but decide to catch up during lunch

I had a hard time getting used to the student body. Even in my third year, I still haven't many friends; I come from a very different background than most BU kids. BUers say they are middle class -- they aren't. They are ridiculously wealthy, but don't always realize it. I grew up in trailers and run-down public housing. I never have extra money laying around, and never have. The high school I went to was a big, urban school. About 3{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of the graduating class went to college, and I was one of two that went to a private college. We had a 65{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} dropout rate. BUers don't get where I'm from. They don't understand how hard I worked in high school, how I know what it's like to go through metal detectors to enter a building. So yeah, I'm an extreme example, but nonetheless it's rough when kids complain their parents are cutting their allowances to only $1000 a month. I'd love to have some help from my parents, but it's just not feasable. Other than that, the student body is diverse. I know people from all over the world now, which is really cool. A good eighth of the males are gay. If you walk down a hallway, you'll see every race possible -- but keep in mind they all grew up in the same nice suburban neighbourhoods. There's religious groups on campus, but there's a LOT of atheists and agnostics. I'm atheist and found it was pretty neat to have people quoting Ayn Rand or Richard Dawkins instead of the bible.

For the most part in my experience there has not been a great deal of racism on BU's campus (in comparison with other campuses I've been at), but then again, I'm also white. Religious students are accepted for the most part, LGBT students have it slightly harder, in my opinion. Socio-economic diversity is essentially non-existant. The vast majority of BU students are rich, affluent white kids. Students who are do not consider themselves mainsteam will not like BU. Most students dress in the current fashions and are very appearance-conscious. Different students do interact, but cliques don't really develop except among students in very specialized majors so feeling isolated is a problem that most students I know have felt at one point or another, despite whether they are different from most other students or not. Most BU students are from the either the East Coast (New England, New York, or Pennsylvania) or from California. Students are not as politically aware as they should be, but they are probably about average for most college campuses. They tend to be very liberal. Students talk about which careers will earn them the most money.

I've met all sorts of people. Extremely Diverse.

There are a lot of queer folk, no poor folk, lots of different foreign students. Hardcore Christians or conservatives probably would feel out of place and so would streetpunks. Most students wear either skinny jeans or uggs to class, also bug-eyed glasses are common. Armani exchange shirts also have a presence. Different people interact, but most types stick to themselves. Blacks with blacks, asians with asians, dirty hippies with dirty hippies, and brosephinas with bros. New Jersey and CT. RICH and upper middle class. Very few students know anything about politics at BU. This is a cesspool of apathy. However, everyone is pretty liberal. Lots of libertarians too. I don't know about the final question because I avoid those people.

Most students at BU are white and middle class. There is a large sect of international students. Gay male students are definitely prevalent, but lesbian or trans students would most likely struggle to find community.

BU is deffinitly an urban campus. I came from a college town back home in CO where everyone basically wore pajamas to class. Not so much in downtown Boston. I think about what I put on in the morning a bit more, which is probably a good thing. There are a lot of upper middle class white kids here, which surprised me. Most students are heavily involved in a million things, you tend to get overcommitted very fast. This being an election year, students are much more politically active. Boston is a liberal city, so that tends to be the dominant view. A lot of people are focussed on getting prepared for the job force and climbing the corporate ladder, more than I expected, but that's probably because we have a good School of Management. There are a lot of students from New Jersey and Long Island, oh the tri-state area.

Didn't (fmr. President) John Silber take away funding for the LGBT or something? There aren't many Blacks for a school so diverse, and I didn't spend any time at Hillel (even though I told my Jewish parents that I did). There aren't too many cliques, and I think that it's easy to make different kinds of friends from all different backgrounds. You're going to be living in Boston - of course it's going to be left-of-center when it comes to politics. No one, outside of the kids in SMG, is bragging about how much money they'll make...although you'll hear a lot of other students practically crying over how little they'll make.