<p>First of all, have you visited the school? That would answer all your questions for you. I can answer some of them for you but many of your comments are rather predisposed to a negative answer. Full disclosure, I am a professor of physics at IIT and have been there for 30 years. Over my time there I have seen a lot of changes and I think i can answer in a relatively unbiased way. However, you might get information from others too.</p>
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<li><p>Yes, my son and daughter have both attended with no problems. All you need to do is to have some awareness of your environment. IIT is an urban campus and like any other urban campus (Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, University of Chicago, for example), there are issues. IIT is no safer or more dangerous than the average urban campus. If you feel unsafe walking form one building to another at night, just call campus security and they will escort you. As I said, you just need to take elementary precautions.</p></li>
<li><p>Most of the buildings were built in the 1950’s and need renovation. The good news is that major funding has been invested in renovating the classroom buildings over the last decade or so, and this continues. This summer there will be a major construction in two of the main buildings for engineering and science, [Engineering1[/url</a>] and [url=“<a href=“http://fuelinginnovation.iit.edu/life-sciences"]Life">http://fuelinginnovation.iit.edu/life-sciences"]Life</a> Sciences](<a href=“http://fuelinginnovation.iit.edu/engineering-1"]Engineering1[/url”>http://fuelinginnovation.iit.edu/engineering-1) which will be renamed in the process. is the campus ugly? Well that is in the eye of the beholder as many architectural tourists come to campus to see the significant buildings designed by famous architects.</p></li>
<li><p>The student life is what you make of it. I have students who complain about it but make no effort to engage. Others get involved and start clubs and have a great time. I have no patience for students who expect a social life to be handed to them and those are usually the complainers. Yes, you have to study hard at IIT but that is the the same at any [url=”<a href=“http://theaitu.org%22%5DAITU%5B/url”>http://theaitu.org”]AITU[/url</a>] school (think MIT, Cal Tech, CMU, CWRU, RPI, RIT and so on).</p></li>
<li><p>Depends on your major but yes, the expectations are high and there is little grade inflation.</p></li>
<li><p>There is a student-run survey each year and it usually focuses on administrative offices since the students, for the most part, are satisfied with the faculty-student interaction (class sizes are small). Every year that the survey has been taking place, the results are better and better because the administrative offices are trying to improve and the upper administration takes the survey results seriously.</p></li>
<li><p>Poor? What do you mean? If it is a financial question, then no. Our endowment is about $200M-$300M depending on the market (it took a hit in the last recession but has rebounded). Financially, the university has a balanced budget and is in the middle of a $250M campaign with about $155M already raised (see discussion about building renovations above).</p></li>
<li><p>We have a lot of international graduate students the undergraduate population is mostly domestic U.S. The university has about 5000 graduate students and 2800 undergraduates. About 1000 of the graduate students are in the Law School, 1000 in the Business School and the rest are mostly science and engineering masters students. Are the students anti-social. Well that is a matter of taste. We have a lot of engineering students. Engineering students are smart and they study hard. This means that they might not want to party too much but that is not necessarily anti-social. If you see my answer about student life, you can find whatever group you want on campus and if you wish to avoid the so-called “nerds” then you are free to do so.</p></li>
<li><p>The SSV dorms are a Helmut Jahn design. This means they are architecturally interesting but some people don’t like them. My son did not but my daughter likes them fine. it is a matter of taste.</p></li>
<li><p>Again, it is very much up to you. There are a lot of active students and a lot of not so active ones. because the university is small, however, the overall numbers of each category is smaller than at a big university. As I ave said before, it is what you make of it. The great thing is that there are two elevated train lines right on campus and there is a lot of opportunity to explore the city of Chicago easily.</p></li>
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<p>Now to answer your last comments:</p>
<p>No, we are not “broke”. We give merit scholarships to students to attract them if we want to have them on campus. Many private universities do this and it does not mean they are broke. It simply means that they are not University of Chicago, Northwestern, MIT or an Ivy and so have their pick of applicants no matter how high the cost.</p>
<p>It is hard to tell if you will be happy at IIT. I know that when we have our Interview Weekend for Camras and Duchossois Scholars, we find that the students who come to visit for the most part really like the university, the campus, the student body, and the faculty and many of them come to IIT even if they do not win the major scholarships. Of course we make good financial offers, see above. if you can possibly visit, do so.</p>