Hello all. I was raised in the metro NYC area, specifically northern NJ (think Sopranos), and I still have family in the area as well as a lot of FB/LinkedIn contacts from my high school.
In sharing the progress of my daughter’s college search with friends and family, I have heard several comments that IU Bloomington has become one of the “trendy” schools for students from that area - “like BU used to be for us in the 80’s” - and one person went so far as to say students from the Northeast consider IUB almost on a par with an Ivy.
My daughter is highly interested in IUB, specifically their newly redesigned Media School and the Hutton Honors College. So this is certainly good to hear, both from a standpoint of school diversity and the perceived “cachet” of the school. When I went to school out in the desert, we did have some students from the Northeast, but I think the weather was a draw and also a fair number of them had grandparents that had retired to the state, which meant they had family in the area.
But I was wondering if anyone on the forums here can explain the origin or reasons behind the “trendiness” of IUB among that population, if it is genuine. New Yorkers tend to be rough on any area west of Philadelphia being worthy of setting foot in - I have family members who always have excuses for not visiting my mother out West, forcing her to do all the traveling to see them - and with Indiana being a “flyover” state, and so many strong schools within a driving radius of 3-4 hours from their area, 6 at most, it seems odd to me.
Any insights would be appreciated.
Yes, there are lots of students attending IUB from both the east and west coasts. Both the Jacobs (music) and Kelley (business) are top-rated so that is one reason. Other reasons - IUB has a large Jewish student population so that is one reason for pulling so heavily from the East coast. issues with the California university system (very hard to get into certain schools, graduate within 4 years due to crowding, etc) has prompted many CA residents to look outside the state (not just in Indiana). Finally, for many years IUB offered substantial automatic merit scholarships to high performing students that made attending OOS financially attractive. And, let’s not forget the campus is gorgeous! Looks very much like an East coast university with the limestone buildings and beautiful green spaces.
@WistfullThinking thank you, this nails it in a nutshell! Now we’re even more excited about it!
As admission to top schools becomes increasingly competitive, students seek out alternatives. Those alternatives then become increasingly popular. We’ve seen this happen with several schools. Perhaps Indiana is one such alternative. Starting with its beautiful campus and one of the best college towns in the country, IU has all the necessary ingredients to become “trendy”. For those who seek out that so-called “complete college experience” (with its Greek life and big time sports), they’ll find it at IU. For those more academically-inclined, they’ll also can find excellent opportunities at IU. Its courses offerings are broad and deep (no engineering, though). It has several relatively uncommon majors. It has a large number of highly ranked graduate programs. It has a broad range of degree options and makes it relatively easy to take courses across the several schools of the the university or to complete double majors. Yet, except for music and business, I don’t know that I would characterize IU as having “cachet.” Even in the Midwest, where we appreciate our great public universities, IU has always been vastly underrated.
Living in southeastern Florida, with many transplanted northeastern-ers, I have heard the same thing about IU.
I will agree with the points stated above. The beautiful campus and “college experience” attracts many students from outside the area. However, coming from CT, the people here hardly consider IU on or near the same academic level as the Ivy League schools. With that said, the pre-professional programs are highly regarded and ranked, which is where the high reputation comes from.
I received my BA at IU Bloomington in 1979 and visited in 2013 when my son was looking at colleges. Although accepted directly into the Kelley School of Business and Hutton Honors College, we had to pass, as there was still a $20k annual delta between his out-of-state package at IU and what he received in-state at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, an inferior school, but the best we could afford.
IU Bloomington is a world-class institution and the campus is more attractive than most in the Northeast. Beyond the business and music schools already mentioned, IU Bloomington is very cosmopolitan. One proof point is the breadth and depth of the foreign language offerings. It’s one of the few places where you can study through to PhD level Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, etc., and take at least three years of Catalan, Dutch, many Slavic languages, and truly obscure languages from sub-Saharan Africa, the Caucasus, etc.
In the 1970s, the university and city of Bloomington were like a Midwestern version of Berkeley: awash in drugs, radical politics, and alternative lifestyles. It may be less so now. I can recommend IU Bloomington warmly to those from the coasts who are truly liberal and open-minded. If you’re coming to condescend to the Midwesterners and especially the native Hoosiers and feel superior about yourself, then do everyone a favor and don’t come.