For Grinnell: How often do you go off campus into Des Moines or Iowa City?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Grinnell College
1

I’m considering going to Grinnell, but I’m not sure how important going off campus is. I come from a boarding school, so am used to staying on campus and being in school, but it’s a little bit different cause going off campus was a 5-minute drive thing, not an hour. I have a few questions that I’d like to have answered:

  1. Do you need to have a car on campus? How much do you usually have to use a car?
  2. I’ve heard that there’s a lot to do on campus, but I’m not too sure what that consists of. Do people usually go to these things or do they just hang out in their rooms?
  3. How do the triples in dorms work?
  4. What does the small town consist of? Is there any shopping that can be done?
  5. Is it hard to get used to a small town from living in a big city?
  6. Do you think going into the bigger cities is important?
  7. How much homework do you usually do a night and how does the daily schedule work?

Thanks for answering!

2

I am a parent of a student at Grinnell. Let me see how i can answer your questions based on what i know:

  1. No, you don't need a car. If my son ever wanted to go somewhere he was able to get a ride with someone or borrow a car. I believe the school now has zip cars on campus, too.
  2. Events consists of speakers, parties, performances, concerts, talks, art shows, dance shows, movies, on-campus pub, sports activities, club activities. So many things. Activities are scheduled by the Student Government Association, by clubs, by different academic programs and by the college administration itself.

Students attend the events, and they also just hang out in the dorms – i imagine that some folks are loners, but I think that when most people hang out in dorms it is because they are with friends, perhaps just partying (yes, many students just do that…) or doing something like playing cards, board games, video games, watching movies, cooking or baking, etc.

By the way, if you are not into partying, there is no pressure to do so and people are not looked down upon if they are substance-free. But of course there is partying at Grinnell, as there is at most colleges…

  1. Triples are larger size rooms with three beds in them. I'm not sure how common they are though.
  2. The town is two blocks away. As you may have seen from the thread on the Grinnell forum, it is a town that is as much -- or more -- geared to the local community as to the students. In terms of shopping, you can get what you need, but if you are looking for fun, hip shopping, then no. But, there are restaurants and chain food places, a grocery in walking distance to campus that offers healthy interesting things, a coffee house, a smoothie place, bakeries, etc. There is also a movie theater but i don't know how often students go there -- the theater on campus shows movies as well.
  3. The college has plenty of students who come from big cities like New York and Chicago, so I imagine so! Students come to Grinnell because they want to be part of a campus community.

6 Students who go to liberal arts colleges often pick a school that is somewhat near (within an hour) of a major city thinking that they will go in often, but generally they don’t. Life at these schools is campus-centric. Yes, sometimes students at these types of schools feel a little bit like they are living in a “bubble” but there is generally also a great sense of community.

  1. College life is so different than high school. Each person's schedule is different. There may be days when you have classes for most of the day and others when you have just one -- or some students even can arrange their schedules where they have a day with no classes! Typically, classes meet for longer periods twice a week or shorter periods three times a week.

The course load is generally four courses a semester, but there are also short courses offered that can be taken in addition, these are often taught by visiting people and last anywhere from two to about four weeks on a wide variety of things). College requires a certain number of “credits” each semester, so usually that is filled by four credit courses – the shorter ones can be one or two credits. Some classes – introductory language for example – might be five credits because students go five days a week or have a lab. Generally I believe that the credit load for a class relates to the actual number of hours spent in class.

Homework is not a nightly assignment. It depends on the class itself. Some classes may have weekly assignment, others just some long-term projects. Time management in college is very important! You will find that you have more time on your hands during the day – because you aren’t going to class all day every day – but also alot more work outside of class (reading,problem sets,research, papers) to get done.

Grinnell is considered a very rigorous school. This can mean a number of things: how fast a school moves through a curriculum – so, for example, a class at Grinnell might cover in one semester what some other colleges cover over a longer period of time. It can also mean more reading (in complexity and / or length). It can also translate into what is expected from a student in an assignment.

But, Grinnell also offers alot of supportive services. It has a fully-staffed Academic Resource Center that gives one-on-one support and offers classes in study skills. The first-year tutorial is also designed as an introduction to college reading and writing – but in a class that offers unusual subjects so that this is done in a really interesting way.

The tutorial professor becomes your faculty advisor until you pick a major, and then you move to a new advisor in that major. When Grinnell talks about an “individually-advised curriculum” it really backs that up!

3

What about the dorming life? Is the food there any good? Thanks for taking time to answer!

4

Not sure what your question is about the dorms? The quality of the space itself? The feeling about living there? The dorms physically are fine. Some are older, some are newer, but they all offer a reasonable amount of living space, a closet, a central lounge and kitchen (some dorms have more than one lounge in the building). Bathrooms are shared in the hall. Each floor votes on whether or not to have bathrooms gender-neutral. If even one person prefers separate male / female then that is the way they are. There is also gender-neutral housing available. There are some themed housing available too for later years. These are small houses not dorms per se, but they are college sponsored.

Grinnell groups all class years together. Some schools have dorms reserved only for first-years. In my son’s first year, it happened that his floor was all first year students. But that is not always the case. In his second year, his floor was primarily second-years with a few first-years. Those first years became good friends with my S and his friends who lived on that floor.

There are Student Advisers in the dorms,and Residence Life Coordinators (who are paid, and who i believe live in one dorm but have responsibility for a group of dorms?). Anyway, these people are all great resources if you want help or advice. I believe but not positive that they also may coordinate some dorm activities.

Also, while people may socialize with friend groups in their dorms, any events or parties that use campus facilities technically are open to everyone. At least that’s what i remember my son saying. So, unlike other schools that may have frat parties that are or feel exclusive, Grinnell has a weekly themed party for all students. My S doesn’t like big parties and so he doesn’t go to those, but that doesn’t mean he is left out of social life – he hangs with friends, attends other events that are of interest, etc… He does attend the all-campus parties like 10/10 and Block Party. Some kids who have recently graduated even come back for those!

As for the food: i think it’s quite good! Certainly, there are a variety of stations at every meal: grill, pizza, pasta, stir fry, salad bar, vegan, Halal, etc. etc. There is a soft ice cream machine, a variety of desserts. I think they also have bread, pb and j, (maybe even cereal?) available all the time, too. The school is making an effort to locally source as much as possible. In all our college visits, there was only one school where the food wasn’t good, so i wouldn’t be concerned about this really.

The Grinnell Dining Hall is an amazing space. Big windows, a variety of seating options – long tables, private booths, some private dining areas that are used for meetings. This year, they instituted a new all-day access to the dining hall, where certain food stations are open all day. The D-Hall used to be open only during specified meal times. Also, there is a snack bar: again another nice place to be. There is a cafe run by students, too – this has limited hours; i’m not so familiar with it.

5

  1. Do you need to have a car on campus? How much do you usually have to use a car?
    You don’t need a car, and most of the students don’t have one. If you do have a car, though, you can expect a lot of people to ask you to drive them out to Walmart or other places that are a pain to walk to.

  2. I’ve heard that there’s a lot to do on campus, but I’m not too sure what that consists of. Do people usually go to these things or do they just hang out in their rooms?
    There are a ton of clubs, academic talks, concerts, parties, and all sorts of other events to go to. As to whether or not someone goes to these things, that depends on the individual. There are a lot of people who just keep to themselves and hang out with their close friends in the dorms (Grinnell can be very cliquey), but there are always things happening on campus if you want to go out and meet people – with or without the assistance of alcohol.

  3. How do the triples in dorms work?
    That depends on the triple. I think most of them have separate sleeping quarters for all three people (which would be smaller than a single), with a shared common space for all three roommates to share. It’s a pretty nice compromise because you feel like you have no privacy in a double, but then you get a single and you realize how easy it is to just coop up in your room and stop going out to socialize. With a triple, you still have somewhere to hide away if you need to do work or just have some alone time, but your roommates will help make sure that you don’t completely isolate yourself.

  4. What does the small town consist of? Is there any shopping that can be done?
    There’s a lot of fast food, a lot of churches, and a few Groceries/Supermarkets. Fareway and McNally’s are a little more expensive than Walmart, but Walmart is pretty far away which makes it less convenient for college students. There’s also a Dollar General I think, and maybe some other grocery stores I’m forgetting about. You can also find a lot of more specialized stores, like a video game store, a bike store, etc.

  5. Is it hard to get used to a small town from living in a big city?
    I don’t know. I grew up in a town even smaller than Grinnell. If you really need to go shopping, though, the college organizes “shopping shuttles” to bus students out to Des Moines and Iowa City every week. If you go on one of those shuttles, then they will transport you out to the city at like noon and come back to pick you up around 7 or 8’ish.

  6. Do you think going into the bigger cities is important?
    Not really. You don’t even have to go out into Grinnell proper if you don’t want. We call it the Grinnell bubble for a reason. Everything you really need is right here on campus, although you’re going to spend a lot more money to buy something at the Grill than if you went off campus and bought the exact same thing at the store.

  7. How much homework do you usually do a night and how does the daily schedule work?
    Classes run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., but most people don’t like to take the early morning classes for obvious reasons, and it’s usually not difficult to engineer your course in such a way that you never have to wake up before 10 a.m. As for homework, well, that just depends on what classes you’re taking and how diligent you are about doing the homework. I don’t think there are very many students here who actually do every assigned reading from beginning to end. The workload here definitely teaches people some time management skills. Personally, I work on homework for a couple hours at night, and then I’ll do the homework for my afternoon classes over my lunch break. It’s really not too bad. If you take a lot of really rigorous classes, though, you might very well end up with six hours of homework every single night. Just make sure you ask your friends about the

8)What about the dorming life? Is the food there any good? Thanks for taking time to answer!
The dorms are pretty nice, but there’s a big difference in culture between the various sections of campus. East Campus is usually pretty quiet because it’s in an inconvenient location for anyone who isn’t an athlete (though Lazier is right across the street from Loose, so parties can happen there occasionally). South Campus is anything but quiet because Gardner is in Main. There are a lot of drugs going around on South too, so just be aware of that. North Campus is a mixed bag, with Younker being an overall very popular choice due to its location right next to the academic buildings, while the North Campus dorms that are further north tend to house a lot of quiet/studious students, along with a few students who just want to be close to the athletic facilities.

The food in the DHall is actually really good if you ask me, but half the people who go here are spoiled fucking children who complain about the food anyway.

6

Hey, I am a current Grinnell student, and I can answer your questions.

  1. You can definitely often get rides with students, but it will take some searching and posting on Facebook/Yik Yak. Most students in any given friend groups do not have cars. For instance, my roommate has a car, but nobody else in our 12 person friend group has a car. There are definitely students with cars, but it will probably take some searching to find them. I will note that athletes tend to be car owners far more often than non-athletes. As for zip cars, we have no such thing on campus. You almost never need to use a car. The only exception is to get to Hy-Vee or Walmart. Everything else is in walking distance. People even walk during Iowa's harsh winters (bundle up)!
  2. While, yes, "events [do] consist of speakers, parties, performances, concerts, talks, art shows, dance shows, movies, on-campus pub, sports activities, club activities" there is often not much to do on campus. Speakers are present almost weekly with 1-2 a week, but they will often conflict with mentor sessions, class, homework, or not be in your field of interest. I've gone to about 8 speakers this year. They are highly hit or miss. I've enjoyed probably 4-5/8. As for parties, yeap, we have them. That's basically all there is to do on weekends. Substance free kids here struggle very hard. You can go to Harris (dance party), Gardner (music party), or a randomly hosted party on weekends. There are no other real weekend activities. You party or you do nothing. The only other real options are studying, going to the local movie theater (which I love, but it's a bit pathetic), or go to a [weekend] activity. [weekend] is the substance-free planning group. Unfortunately, their activities revolve around (i'm not joking, unfortunately) cookie decorating, gingerbread house decorating, and board game nights (monopoly, yahtzee, taboo). The activities are very childish, and they host the same ones over and over. Concerts which happen at Gardner are all unknown regional bands or national bands with no traction and are honestly awful (and this is coming from someone who loves modern pop, classic rock, and hip-hop). The artists are low quality. Art shows really aren't a thing. We have an art gallery and an exhibit that changes about weekly, but that's that. Nothing spectacular, but worth a peak. Dance shows are few and far between, but they can be great! I went to two in the last semester, and I loved them. On-campus movies are pretty mediocre and revolve around 6+ month old releases in our really mediocre cinema. It's an alright activity to do, but it gets boring after awhile. Good to do every once in awhile. The on-campus pub has pub quiz every week which can be fun ($1 entrance fee and winning team collects the pot). It can be hard to make time for though. Sports activities and club activities are poorly attendant and basically dead. Our busiest sports season is definitely basketball, which can be fun to watch, but the only students that really show up are townies that now go to Grinnell and other athletes. It's a very depressing sports culture. As for clubs, student participation is very low. We advertise having 200+ clubs (or a close number), but most of those clubs don't actually exist. Most clubs are not advertised and are more a collection of a few friends who collect funding from the university to pay for activities they keep among their group. Most clubs are also hobby oriented (cinema, bread baking, breakdancing, etc...). There are no pre-professional clubs on campus (or career oriented clubs in general). SDonCC is right that, "Activities are scheduled by the Student Government Association, by clubs, by different academic programs and by the college administration itself."

SDonCC is pretty accurate when she/he says that “most people hang out in dorms it is because they are with friends, perhaps just partying (yes, many students just do that…) or doing something like playing cards, board games, video games, watching movies, cooking or baking, etc.”

However, SDonCC somewhat right when saying that “if you are not into partying, there is no pressure to do so and people are not looked down upon if they are substance-free.” Nobody looks down on substance-free kids (I am substance-free). Although, substance free kids often feel highly pressured to party, because there are NO weekend alternatives in town or on campus, besides [weekends] childish shenanigans. Also, SDonCC is COMPLETELY WRONG WHEN SAYING “But of course there is partying at Grinnell, as there is at most colleges…” The partying here is extreme. MDMA was found on campus a few weeks ago. The student next door to me sells drugs. Many halls reak of weed, since there are no RAs at Grinnell to write up students who smoke on campus. I have witnessed students doing cocaine on campus too. On Niche (a college ranking website), Grinnell rankings #1,154 of 1,177 on Drug Safety. That means that only 23 schools have worse drug safety than Grinnell. I know students who go to the University of Iowa (the no. 1 party school in the nation for 2013 and 2014), and they are absolutely amazed bow the awful drug stories I tell them. Grinnell has hard drug and alcohol use – far higher than the normal college campus.

  1. Triples are indeed larger sized rooms with three beds, but they are incredibly rare at Grinnell. They are so rare that I have only heard rumors about them existing. I have never been in a single triple, and I have been into a lot of dorm rooms. I also don't know anybody on campus who lives in one. You will live in a double during your first year. After that, if you get a good housing number at the end of your first year, you will have some more options. First and second years are not allowed to live in singles, unless they are selected to be SAs.
  2. I'm just going to copy and paste what SDonCC said about the town, because I couldn't write it better "The town is two blocks away. As you may have seen from the thread on the Grinnell forum, it is a town that is as much -- or more -- geared to the local community as to the students. In terms of shopping, you can get what you need, but if you are looking for fun, hip shopping, then no. But, there are restaurants and chain food places, a grocery in walking distance to campus that offers healthy interesting things, a coffee house, a smoothie place, bakeries, etc. There is also a movie theater but i don't know how often students go there -- the theater on campus shows movies as well." Although, I can comment on theater use. When big releases come out (the new Hobbit and Hunger Games movie), our student government will book an entire showing and distribute free tickets on a first come first serve basis. [weekend] also occasionally gets a few dozen tickets for showings. They did so for Gone Girl, Theory of Everything, and American Sniper. I spend a lot of the time at the local theater, so it's a nice deal, but it doesn't happen all the time. Students get $7 tickets anyways, so movies aren't that expensive.

5-8 continued in next post (hit the character limit)

7
  1. Many students come from Beijing, Seoul, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, etc..., so adjusting can be brutal. I came from a metro about 40x the size of Grinnell (400,000 and also in Iowa), and it's still a very hard adjustment. Personally, I haven't adjusted, or I have and hate the small town atmosphere. I moved from a relatively moderate sized metro to what seems like the middle of nowhere. It's one of the major reasons I will be transferring this fall. It's also a major reason for why my roommate and 3 close friends are also transferring. It can be suffocating at times, if you aren't used to it.
  2. Going to big cities will help you survive in Grinnell (if you consider IA City and Des Moines big). However, the shuttles are maybe once a month, twice if you get lucky. It can be pretty difficult to get out of town if you don't have a car. Someone may agree to drive you to Walmart, but they won't necessarily agree to drive you to Des Moines. I haven't visited either since I have been to Grinnell, but I also live in IA and have been to each a dozen times, so there is also that factor. I know it helps a lot of students relax.
  3. Course load definitely depends on the individual, but I want to really refute that "homework is not a nightly assignment."This just really isn't accurate. Every single class I have every had at Grinnell (besides 1cr. or 2cr. courses) have had homework every single night. My roommate generally does 5-6 hours of homework every night, and I generally do 4-5 hours of homework every night. Although, some days you will probably spend your entire day doing homework. There are very few break days. You can probably afford to not do homework one day a week (Friday). You can pull of Friday and Saturday, if you spend all of Sunday doing homework. The amount of work I do at Grinnell is truly massive and annoying. Some of it adds a lot of value to my education, and a lot adds very little value. Some weekends I will have 300pgs to read for once class. Some weekends I will have 50pgs for that same class. It really depends. Each week is highly variable. Daily schedule can also really vary. I go to class from 10-12 MF and 8-4 on TWTH, but I also take 18cr. instead of the regular 16cr.

Also, Kudryavka stated that “I don’t think there are very many students here who actually do every assigned reading from beginning to end.” I am one of those students who reads every page of every assigned reading, and I also take largely STEM + history courses, so I have a very intense schedule when it comes to outside of the classroom preparation. Not all students choose to do what I do. Many of those students also have much worse grades than I do. It depends on what you prioritize.

  1. Dorms vary. In my opinion, East is the best place to live when considering dorm quality. They are the newest dorms, most clean, and spacious. I have also lived in North (Norris) which is known to be, or considered to be, the worst dorm. It's pretty awful and relatively dingy. Most of the dorms on South and North are in ok condition, but they just seem uncleanly and old, in my opinion. East is definitely quiet, and South and North are generally more active. As for DHall food, I think it is good, like Kudryavka said. However, variety is severely lacking. You get tired of the same 7 choices of cereal, hamburgers, bagels, and pizza that are served every day. There are other stations that serve other food that isn't there every day, but they are pretty hit or miss. I don't eat vegan, but there are vegan options. I think I would probably like DHall food better if I didn't have rather limited tastes. You'll probably run into DHall variety issues about everywhere you go. As I said, if you can get past a lack of variety, the food is pretty good.
8

Regarding the drug issue, I have been to plenty of college campuses, and I don’t think Grinnell is an exceptionally drug-ridden, free-wheeling drug and boozefest like Mochese is making it out to be. There are definitely a lot of students on campus who do drugs, but they’re not even close to the majority. I would say that about 80-90% of the students drink alcohol (and yes, it’s easy to drink while underage here), but most students here don’t take illegal drugs. Marijuana is the most popular drug here on campus after alcohol, but there are still more people on campus who abstain than those who partake. Just be sure to pick your friends carefully, because if you fall in with people who smoke, you’re probably going to end up doing it too.

Personally, I think the drinking culture here is a lot more problematic than the drugs. There are a lot of people who get ridiculously smashed on the weekends because they’re trying to “work hard, play hard”, which basically translates to drinking way too much and trying to justify it because you have a lot of homework. I don’t really buy into that stuff, but people here honestly drink way too much. The drinking is a big problem because it also feeds into the hook-up culture we have on campus. It’s something that both students and the administration have tried to address, but Grinnellians are pretty stubborn about getting wasted and making poor decisions during the weekend.

You hear about other drugs going around too, but I don’t think they’re very prevalent. Molly was apparently found on campus according to an email the administration sent out earlier this year, but I’ve personally never heard of anyone taking or selling that stuff. Cocaine seems pretty far-fetched, too, based on my personal experience. If harder drugs like that are around, then they’re only circulating in very limited circles, because I live in Loose and the only drug that I know shows up a lot in the dorms is weed. At this point, it seems like the SAs in South Campus have just decided to overlook students who smoke weed in the dorms. My floor in Loose definitely smells like weed on Friday/Saturday nights, and you can expect the fire alarms in Loose to go off once a week like clockwork.

Other than that, there are also some people who take “study drugs”, i.e. Adderall, Ritalin, etc. That’s more a result of the intense workloads that a lot of students end up with, though. People don’t take those drugs and go out to party. They take that kind of stuff and go to the library so that they can pull an all-nighter without getting tired. It kind of feels like they’re cheating and getting an unfair advantage over the rest of us since they’re using drugs to do their homework and papers, but there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.

If anyone is really concerned about the drinking/drug culture here on campus, you can private message me with any questions you have. I’m a senior here (well, technically graduating Winter 2015), and I’ve definitely been exposed to a lot of this stuff in my time at Grinnell, so I can tell you whatever you want to know about my experience with drinking/drugs here at Grinnell. I really don’t think anyone should avoid the school because there are drugs on campus, but it is definitely something to be aware of.