University of Notre Dame Top Questions

Work hard, play hard.

Great, fun loving, hard working people who will be my best friends for life.

Most people are very studious and willing to work together, so there is a very supportive learning environment.

My classmates are very intelligent, very driven, and very focused on making the world a better place through unique uses of their different skill sets.

As discussed above, Notre Dame is fairly homogenous. It's common to joke that everyone on campus shops at the same stores, listens to the same music and has the same political views, and there is some degree of truth to this. When I was there in the late 90s-early 00s, it seemed like everyone shopped at Abercrombie and loved Dave Matthews. But you would have to put some effort into NOT finding other students who come from different parts of the country, have different backgrounds and hold different world views. And even over the 4 year period that I was there, you could see that the student body was becoming increasingly diverse on many different fronts. LGBT issues is definitely the area where the most progress remains to be made. While I never felt that the student body itself was hostile to LGBT issues, LGBT prospective students should be aware that the administration does not go out of its way to address those issues (e.g., there is no officially sanctioned LGBT student group on campus). Most students are laid back and friendly. Friendship groups are most often based around the residence halls, which function as fraternities and sororities. While people get set into those friendship groups early and stick with them throughout their years on campus, classes, athletics and activities offer plenty of opportunities to branch out and meet different people. Generally, the longer you've been there, the more different types of people you will interact with on a regular basis.

They go out of their way to be helpful and friendly.

Friendly intelligent fun (most) while some are socailly awkward or arrogant

My classmates are hard working, intelligent students but they lack diversity overall.

Several clips of students answering three questions, including their favorite class.

ND students do match the stereotype of kind of preppy upper-middle class suburban white guys, but it's not as bad as lots of people make it out to be. We have a reasonable amount of diversity still. Everyone is fairly intellectual, which creates a very different atmosphere than lots of state schools. Still, you won't be the least intelligent person around. It usually feels like a normal school ought to. One thing that bothers me is that the music taste of Notre Dame is pretty terrible - it's centered predominately on bad eighties music.

Everyones really nice and open to meeting every student on campus.

The student body is not very diverse at all. Most are financially well off white kids.

The ND student body is very studious, but its not hard to find people who like to have fun too. Students are from all over the country so there are many different perspectives on life.

The student body is not diverse. I will not kid anyone. But this makes the students body amazing. Students do not faction off into groups racially because of this. For example in my dorm's section there is only one hispanic kid and as a result he hangs out with all of us instead of with only hispanic kids like you might find at a "more diverse school." Students are generally smart, catholic, faithful and into sports. Something like 70{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of students were captains of a varsity team in HS. Students are from all over the country. The catholic nature of students is generally manifested in the political views. The campus is very pro-life, anti-war, pro-catholic social teaching and such. Consequently there are both democrats and republicans but students are generally Catholic first.

ND is known for not being very diverse. A lot of rich, white kids from the midwest.

The student body here is pretty homogeneous; most people here are preppy white student-athletes. However, that is not to say you can't find different people; you might just have to look a little harder. Also, the more you get to know people here, the more you realize how interesting they are. Almost everyone has some hidden talent or interesting piece of background that you can find if you can just get past the initial "Notre Dame social awkwardness." For the most part, Notre Dame students come from middle or upper-middle class families. If you take the pyramid-shaped distribution of wealth of the real world and turned it upside down, that's the distribution of wealth at Notre Dame. The students are generally more conservative, but this is only a loose rule, as there are a good number of liberal students, too. But even more common are politically apathetic/unaware students. Notre Dame has often been described as a "bubble" in which students are sheltered or disconnected from what is going on in the rest of the world. This can be a negative, but it also allows students to focus on their studies and enjoy their college lives without unnecessary worries. As I have said, a majority of the students here are religious to some extent, and Catholicism pervades just about every aspect of campus life. For this reason, a student who has no interest in religion or spirituality would probably feel out of place here.

The student body tends to be very relaxed. Most people just wear jeans or sweats to class.

I think it's not very diverse but probably more so than in the past. Geographically the student body seems diverse, which is pretty cool because I have friends from all over the place. I don't see a lot of cliques here which is good.

this school is a bubble made up of primarily rich white people. however, i have friends of all races and backgrounds. Catholicism is the major factor as more than 80 percent of people are catholic here. This is something that unifies the entire school as a whole, in ideaology and inclusion. people who would feel out of place would probably be gays. which is a very big shame. most students wear presentable clothes to class, no sweats. many girls wear dresses on a regular basis. the dining halls are split up more by dorm than by anything else. most people are rich. even if someone is black they are probably rich.

Most students come from well-off close white families. Kind of a stereotype, but also kind of true. Most students that don't fit this description tend to stick out a little bit and band together. A lot of students are concerned with their future financial situation but still a large amount of students are more concerned with making a difference and serving people first.