<p>I go to a top-ranked school in the Northeast that’s about 30% Asian. My friends make more racist jokes about Asians than you would believe. My sister attended a similarly highly ranked school in the Midwest that also had a large Asian-American population. There was an incident there where a group of Asian students were assaulted. She encountered plenty of anti-black racism there, mostly in the form of micro-aggressions, as I do at my school. There was plenty of anti-Hispanic discrimination. Her school had a big problem with classism as well. My school has had issues with homophobia and sexism. I’ve heard Islamophobic comments from time to time. And all these comments have come from people of all different colors and orientations and persuasions. I encounter few people who are uniformly accepting.</p>
<p>None of these are huge overarching issues that define our lives though. Most of the comments are made behind the backs of anyone who would be offended. They’re fairly minor annoyances; the background noise for our lives. Your friends will likely encounter no more discrimination spending a weekend at a PWI than they do living their lives anywhere else.</p>