Grinnell College Top Questions

For the most part I would say that people here are very smart, but there are people here will all kinds of interests, so it's hard to make and accurate sterotypical Grinnellian. Also, the homework is definitely quite a bit harder than high school, but certainly managable.

-There are a large number of very liberal minded students on campus. Being rather conservative myself I have not found myself hated or discriminated against, but there are the occasional debates between friends that will spring up. Nothing ever hostile though. -You might find one or two stuck up kids in a crowd of 100 Grinnellians, but usually they are the ones who end up being ostracized. Grinnellians do not like people with supremacist attitudes.

They all have some basis in reality, but Grinnell is a diverse community. I've heard the dominant feeling described as, "I'm ok with whatever you're into, whether or not I'm at all into it." We have the gay vegan Democrats who only buy organic. We have some political diversity, although the campus is definitely predominantly liberal. We have militant atheists, devout Pagans, and an active Grinnell College Christian Fellowship. We have football players who get roaring drunk every weekend and passionately study Shakespeare every week. We do get a TON of homework, and most people do most of it--but that doesn't stop us from leading rich social and extracurricular lives. I do know several science and theater majors who only leave their respective academic buildings for occasional meals in the alst month of the semester. The town is, in fact, in the middle of a cornfield. Oh yeah--the dirty hippie thing isn't entirely exaggerated either. Showers aren't daily for a significant portion of us.

Sort of. The vast majority of Grinnellians are liberal, even militantly so, and extremely intolerant of anyone who may share a different worldview of their own.

For the most part, yes.

Not completely. While a lot of them do represent the college, they do so in far less of an extreme than the stereotype might suggest. While the college is very liberal, there are rules. The courses are difficult and there is a lot of coursework, but with a little time management, nothing anyone can't handle.

For the most part they are accurate, Grinnell College is very academically challenging but it does pay off, as most students in the sciences (students I am most familiar with) get into the top graduate schools in the nation. Also, Grinnell is fairly liberal, but quite diverse and you will find some people that don't shower all that often.