Purdue University-Main Campus Top Questions

Diverse. Mostly spirited (though sometimes I wish a little more). Fun. I had a monkey and banana run through one of my classes the other day. My friend had the Burger King prance down the stairs of her lecture, follow the lecturing professor around, and propose to someone via burger. It was Halloween, but the monkey and banana show up at basketball games and have been known to support Purdue Student Government politics.

As I stated earlier, the student body overall is very caring, as well as enthusiastic. Students are always wearing black and gold around the campus, and before and after a big football or basketball game the campus is an exciting place to be. The school spirit is awesome here!

There is great international diversity at Purdue but not a whole lot of geographic or racial diversity otherwise. Most students are from the Midwest, especially Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Purdue is a large school, however, and if you want to find a certain group of people, it's likely you can find them somewhere on campus. There truly is a little bit of everything. Overall, the student body is friendly, studious, and relaxed. One thing that is lacking compared to many other college campuses is activism. There are a few outspoken groups, but for the most part there are very few demonstrations, political rallies, etc. on campus. One of my favorite parts about Purdue is that during the week, students are relaxed and do not wear fancy clothes to class. Most people wear jeans and a sweatshirt or something similar (depending on the season!).

Purdue has an extremely diverse campus. We have one of the largest international student populations in the nation and with our many study abroad/exchange programs I think the only kind of student that would feel out of place is someone opposed to experience new things. Although it seems like most PU students are either from Indianapolis of Chicago, it's college so wear whatever you want. Grunge your way to class in sweats and flip-flops or throw on a collard shirt and nice pants. For a college campus Purdue is very conservative, have no worries though there are plenty of opportunities and organizations for all political views.

Everyone is attentive in class.

This university has perhaps the highest percentage of international students, yet there is very little cultural diversity. That is because the vast majority of the students are either white conservative-leaning midwestern kids, or international graduate students from India and China. That is not real cultural diversity. On a being a woman at this university: If you are in an engineering department, you will have to work against academic isolation. There are relatively few women in Engineering and interactions tend to take the tone "I might like to date you" rather than, "Let's form a study group." This tendency to interact with you on the basis of your gender causes isolation and puts you at a disadvantage in classes where it really helps to team up. For example, its a big help to have people you can get the notes from if you miss a class. I found that students tended to clump together into study groups along ethnic lines: a group of chinese students, a group of Muslim Indian students, Hindu Indian students, etc. I don't think there is anything wrong with this per se, but I did find such grouping made it more difficult for me to form study groups. I believe that other schools may achieve more real diversity -- cultural, religious, economic, etc, and that there may be more mixing of students at such schools.

They all seem like normal people...as far as engineers are normal...lol.

They are some of the best friends I've ever had.

My classmates are hard-working during the week and hard-partying during the weekends.

There is no just way to describe 40,000 students as one people when everyone is so different.