Indiana University-Bloomington Top Questions

The academics are top-notch, especially at the Kelley School of Business. The professors have their own businesses or consulting jobs, meaning they're teaching from experience rather than from a book. Most of the classes inspire greater intellectual conversations, but these classes are generally after students complete I-CORE, a comprehensive semester-long class.

Not many professors know my name because my lectures are full of 200+ students. Unless I have questions that my A.I.s cannot answer, I usually leave my professors to be bugged by some kiss-ass student who thinks it will help his grade. My favorite classes are the small ones. Probably my guitar class back freshman year. I study everyday; at least 3 hours a night. Literally. No joke. Students in my upper level science classes are very competitive. I'll be taking racquetball next semester! That's pretty unique! I am a Biology BS major. I do not spend time with my professors out of class; that would be weird. This school is a great school for someone like me who is trying to get into dental school.

The academics at my school, I believe, are very impressive. As a marketing student, I am attending one of the best-rated schools in the country for business, the Kelley School of Business, and I feel that I am constantly be pushed and challenged to become the best student and professional that I can be. At a school of over 40,000 students, I can see how one would become nervous that it would be difficult to get to know one's teachers, but, from my experience, even in my larger lecture classes, if you make the effort to introduce yourself and talk to your professors, then they will make the same effort to get to know you as a student. Most of my lecture classes also have smaller discussion or lab classes that are included so that you have the opportunity to learn in both a more public and a more intimate environment. The students here are very competitive and truly care about their future, which is beneficial because it challenges you to work harder.

Classes at Indiana University are very challenging and rewarding. The teachers here are very concerned with your overall success, and will not give a grade out that you do not deserve. Students here want to learn, and it is evident in the classroom.

I would have to start by saying that the best thing about IU is the size of the campus. It's so large that it breeds diversity and there are all kinds of people to meet and friends to make. It's definetely a college town. Also, IU offers a huge variety of classes from fly fishing and scuba diving to your typical business or science classes. And the staff is very knoweledgable of their fields; they're very top notch. Overall, I would not say that the campus is too large. Also, school pride is a pretty important thing at IU, so it's always fun to go to the basketball and football games, and the tailgating it like no other college's. Finally, the campus itself is very beautiful with all of the trees and openness. It defensively played a part in why I came here.

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Academics at IU is rigorous. The classes are enjoyable and challenging, and the teachers strive to make their respective subjects interesting. I feel that the academic requirements at IU are achievable and well designed to assist incoming freshmen, so as to accommodate them into the foreign college environment. It must be noted that political participation, voting, and debates/conversations often occur outside the classroom. One must be careful when using the term "intellectual", for how does one know which conversations can be described as "intellectual". However, a large number of conversations are stimulating and intelligent.

I'm not entirely sure what other student's study habits are like, but one thing that for sure; Indiana makes studying easy. I talk to my professors, I use the libraries, I participate in study groups...it just makes so much sense to take advantage of all the opportunities given to me as a student.

My academic advice would have to be this: make sure that your professor knows your name. A lot of career paths require recommendation letters and it is important to remember that a professor cannot write a recommendation if he/she doesn't know you. Also, make the transition from high school to college easier on yourself by remember that the nature of the beast is a lot different. High School and college are complete polar opposites and you can't hold yourself to the same standards that you do in high school. It's great if you are a straight A student, but don't expect to maintain that if you do the same amount of work. It'll be overwhelming and you cannot afford to let yourself become stressed because if you do, you're just going to waste a lot of energy bouncing around and end up where you started with the same problems.

The class sizes are vary diverse. From my experience, the beginning classes have the largest number of students and the more advanced classes have the fewest. Instructors and professors will bend over backwards to ensure success. There are always office hours available and students who utilize them are the most successful. Some of the upper level classes have been difficult, especially when dealing with lingiustics. It always helps to talk to the professor or instructor to get advice. Getting help from another student outside of class always helps too. I have not seen within the Spanish department too much of a competetive spirit among students, but rather, mainly a deep concern about one's own's grades. Again, professors are always available outside of class and the more time you arrange to spend, the better. There are all kinds of internships, jobs and other opportunities, and it's the student's responsibility to do the research.

Classes and standards are pretty reasonable allowing students to balance school and a social life.

I have been very happy with the academics at IUB. Every professor has been very knowledgable on the subject they are teaching, and also very helpful if you need it. This is a large university, but the professors, administrators, and other students create an atmosphere of a much smaller, close-knit place. Since this is a big school, you will have to take classes that meet in large lecture halls, but usually the professors are very adament about class/student participation. You almost always have a smaller discussion class that meets once a week for each large lecture class, where you get to know other students and usually some of the associate instructors (usually graduate students). Once you begin focusing on requirements for your particular major, the classes become much smaller and more focused on specific topics.

Definitely go to class and get to know your professors. I get good grades mainly because I try hard and my professors know so. I do poorly on tests but because they see the effort I put in, they raise my grade. This is true!

The professors in the music are great! The music school offers a ton of courses in all aspects of music so you are able to get a well-rounded "book" education beyond the perfomance aspect of music. Since there are a lot of general electives needed to graduate (more than other conservatories), I would reccomend either studing for AP Exams or taking a few community college classes.

I'm accounting and finance in the Kelley School of Business and have been extremely pleased with my experience. The professors in the B-school have been awesome. They are down to earth while still having an incredible knowledge of the subjects which they teach. Some profiles include former VP of Tax for Fortune 500 Company, fair value accounting expert who consulted the chief economist of the President of the United States during the subprime housing crisis, and alumni from companies such as McKinsey, PwC, GE, etc. The school is nationally recognized and provides top performing students opportunities to pursue premium career paths such as management consulting and investment banking. If interested in either of these industries, check out the Consulting Workshop (contact Prof. Rubin) or Investment Banking Workshop (contact Prof. Haeberle).

Kelly Business school is re-donk-u-lus. They produced Mark Cuban, yeah that billionaire that gets to boss around Dirk Noviwnkskwyssksky. (sp?) Great Med School. The Journalism School puts out a great publication with the IDS (Indiana Daily Student). Can't forget about LAMP (Liberal Arts and Management) and CMCL (Communications and Culture), these programs contain the best professors in the country, and ensure you a broad level of learning that will land you a job ANYWHERE. Oh yeah, and we have the Kinsey Institutue, where sex was invented..

Looking back on my first year at IU, I am surprised at many things. The amount of participation and interaction students engage in during classes is much higher than I had expected. Students want to get everything they can out of a course. Learning is of top concern in the classroom. If you happen to have a large lecture course, you have student email addresses available to you through the IU website and students welcome help from each other. You can really get to know your professor if you are the type of person who enjoys more specific, one-on-one teaching or just trying to find out who your teacher is. I feel every professor and employee at IU is there to help you. Any questions or concerns you may have, there is always someone there to guide you. They are there to help you in your path towards a career and a better education.

Some of the classes are huge lecture halls with at least 200 students. Professors of those classes never know your name, of course. But the smaller classes tend to be about 20-40 people, I would estimate, and teachers often try to learn students' names in those classes. Class participation is common in some classes, and definitely minimal in others. Some teachers are really good at getting the students interested in the subject and initiating discussion, while others are more passive in this respect and would rather do most of the talking themselves. Each class has a different atmosphere, I've noticed. Having to take four semesters of a foreign language (because I'm in the college of arts and sciences) sucks! I am really bad at learning other languages, memorizing vocabulary, etc. So I can't wait to get that out of the way. I think most students would agree with me on that. I also think the Spanish department here is pretty terrible: the books they choose to use are awful. They don't give hardly any examples, they aren't organized at all (it's impossible to find things in them), the dictionaries in the back don't have half the words you need to look up in them, and the requirements for the course don't help you learn how to speak Spanish at all. I haven't learned how to construct sentences. I can't even say a single sentence in Spanish, and I've taken two semesters of it! I mean, the books we had in high school were much easier to use than the stupid Sabias Que series we're using here. I would like to be able to speak another language, but I've found out college isn't the place to learn one! Also, being a music minor here sucks a lot, too. Music majors are usually in performance. For they most part, they're uppity bastards who think they're smarter at everyone else and better because they also play an instrument all badass-like. If you're a music minor, all these majors think you're some sort of push over or something. You still have to take classes with the majors, and they go around and say what "their instrument" is. Like the own the world's supply of the damn thing. And I always don't know what to say when that happens because I play like three different instruments and I wouldn't consider any of them "my instrument." The practice building sucks, too. like 80{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of the pianos in there are pieces of shit. The keys stick and they're always out of tune. This is supposed to be one of the best music schools in the country or something, and the practice building is really small and has crappy pianos? What kind of nonsense is that? Being a music minor has been difficult for me because of how discouraging it is. They pretty much make you feel like if you're only a minor, you probably suck at music but you just like it so you're wasting time and taking up space in the Jacobs School of Music. It has been very frustrating for me, having grown up with a love for music and learned to play multiple instruments and having been involved with a lot of music programs in high school. Now I have to take really basic classes about theory and music history where they treat you like you're in middle school, just because I'm a music minor and wanted to learn about other things rather than being couped up in a stinky room practicing "my instrument" for about 12 hours a day. As far as what the education is geared towards, I would say that depends on the school or department the student is in. Some schools, probably like the business school and SPEA definitely focus more on getting a job and what types of jobs are available to those students, and a lot of classes required through the college of arts and sciences, which often have nothing to do with a students' major, are more geared toward learning for its own sake, like culture studies and arts and humanities. Some students' majors have nothing to do with courses in those subjects, but they have to take them, anyway.

I feel that the professor that I have had are always willing to go the extra mile and help you if you don't grasp something that was discussed in lecture.

Academics? I won't talk long on that. It's definitely what you make it. I won't make this personal, but I can give you plenty of general stuff. Your intro classes for your major are always big... I've been in classes that's had 5 students in it, and I've had an online class that's had 300 students in there. We only met for exams. Regardless of the size of your class, you should never feel like the professor won't have a chance to know your name. For example, I knew my professor that taught the class of 300 because we actually participated in the same social/dance group! Connecting with the class and instructor could not get too much easier. Email is the main means of communication, so we get mass emails all the time. However, they have adopted a few ways to avoid clutter in your mailbox. We use an online collaborative learning tool called OnCourse. With this, we can see the people in our class, check out our syllabus, course assignments, and retrieve resouces and articles that our instructor might post for us. Chat is oftentimes activated as well. We can take our test online, if the instructor chooses to do that, and we can submit timed and untimed assignments online. I've also used an online system called webwork. With this online web system, I was able to do my calculus homework online. One very interesting class I had, the one with 30 students in it, was a class called the "Sociocultural perspective of African American Music." This class allowed us to see and hear the instructor, watch his powerpoint slides, view the music and videos that he had for the class, and it allowed us to have public and private chats that allowed us to have a very collaborative and effective learning environment. Speaking of instructors, I do my best to get to know all of them. There are less than a handfull that I may try not to cross in the future, but for the most part, I either meet with my professors during office hours or for lunch, and I usually pass by, email, or facebook my past instructors. I think that IUB has a stable academic environment, and I feel that with the requirements for being admitted to IUB undergrad and the institution's colleges rising, I think that they sometimes make it a little more difficult for some students who may have more potential or knowledge that their gpa or other credentials may show. At the same time, I hope that this means that the caliber of students that IU will have will be more competant and persistant. I also believe that IUB will be looked upon as a more selective institution...