@Beaudreau thank you. That is a great comparative assessment.
Did your son think of attending ASU, ASU and ISU seem similarly ranked.
ASU is actually higher ranked. Itâs a good engineering school. My son actually did a one-week summer engineering orientation at ASU, as did his brother. Neither ended up wanting to go there, although they have good friends that do. I think all three boys wanted to see new parts of the country.
Sorry, about the same ranking for engineering. Overall, ASU is a bit higher ranked.
Steve Kingâs district is heavily gerrymandered, so Ames only makes up about a fifth of the population of his district. Just saying it isnât THAT conservative. There are quite a few internationals students, I think.
@intparent THANK YOU! Steve King was exactly what I was worried about and I have wondered what it means for the school to sit in his district. My daughter isnât international though, just from Chicago â but that presence will definitely help!
My son is a freshman at ISU. He considers himself a âhard core lib.â He has been very happy at ISU and from what he has told me, he has made many like-minded friends.
@uwalummom thank you! What is his major?
The other thing re Steve King, is that generally students vote in their home districts absentee, donât they?
@enginmom4 My son is a business major, but he lives in Friley and his friends are almost all engineering majors.
Thank you!
Students can vote at their college addresses, but some states have rules that make it more difficult for students to vote. A student, particularly an out if state one, should check rules carefully.
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/student-voting
http://www.brennancenter.org/how-vote-2016 (old, check state web sites for changes)
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Usually the number of reported minorities on a collegeâs stats are domestic students only and donât include international. If there is a large number of international students, the campus may look very different than the numbers report.
One of my kids goes to Wyoming and she was very worried about the 80%+ white students stat. She wanted a more diverse student body. She has found it to not be an issue at all. There are a fair number of white, conservative students but sheâs found a lot of diversity in politics, religion, race, foreign students.
My other daughter attends the school with the highest percentage of international students in the US. The reported racial statistics mean nothing.
They may or may not mean something, depending on the kid. If youâre a young American-raised white kid looking for people who are different from you in some way, international + non-white domestic undergrad + grad might be a fine measure. If youâre a young American-raised minority kid looking for people with some commonality of background / culture / experience, no quantity of foreign-raised grad students who superficially resemble you is going to provide that.
I think it is more common for students to register and vote on their campuses, but they are generally allowed to do either one. Absentee voting can be quite a hassle. The ballot needs to be requested well ahead of time. Some states or counties have strict rules about when/why you are allowed to vote absentee (although away at college is definitely a good excuse). Then the rules when you get the ballot can be quite convoluted. My D2âs first year away at college she voted absentee, and she needed to find another registered voter from her state to sign her ballot envelope as a witness (or find a notary)! She was way across the country from home, but fortunately knew another student from our state and they witnessed for each other. I just checked, and that is still the state law for absentee ballots from that state.
Voting rules are non-standard and arcane, and there have been big pushes in many areas in recent years to make it harder to get registered and stay registered in an attempt to try to suppress certain voting populations.
Students (particularly from out-of-state) who want to vote in Iowa need to be aware of voter identification laws there:
https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/voterinformation/voterIDfaq.html
Can I jump in an ask how LGBT are treated at Iowa State? My DC comes from the suburbs of DC and is a huge advocate of diversity/openness to sexuality, race, and religion. She is really interested in ISU and although she doesnât want a 100% liberal school, she is very nervous about mid-west colleges.
Hi @NewSR1 my daughter was too worried about this issue and chose a school in Illinois â we are also from Illinois so it is in state tuition. I know being from DC the midwest can seem like all in one (fly over country! LOL), but there are a lot of differences between the states. Illinois tends to be different demographically and politically than other midwest states like Indiana, Missouri or Kansas. Check out the class for this yearâ's freshman class at University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana just as an example. I have lived in Indiana before and my husband (mexican) received horrible treatment by many businesses, police and people. ISU sits in Steve Kingâs district - that was a huge deciding factor (along with the sad % numbers for diversity for my daughter).
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