I LOVE DORMS

Introduction
There are a lot of reasons that contributed to it. It was far away from my home. I am from New Mexico. The main reason I came to Illinois is because I visited the school and it had a beautiful campus. I really liked the diversity they offered at Illinois.

Coming from New Mexico, it was a huge shift because most of the students are from Illinois. I really enjoyed that because it gave me a sense of a different kind of culture. Just with the different backgrounds. People were very receptive of my background. I was able to find out a lot about other peoples’ cultures just from people with different backgrounds.

Campus Life and Social Life
I think one of the most positive things about coming to Illinois was living in the dorms. It has been one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had. Just from dorm life, I’ve really enjoyed getting to interact with so many different people on a daily basis. Also, I interact with future leaders in different fields…people I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. There are like 5 engineers that are my friends. So if I am ever working on any project that involves any building, they are able to help me out. Being a pre-med student, all my friends ask me for medical advice. Even though we are just starting out, we are making connections with people in different Majors which we wouldn’t be able to do in our classes! Academics
I would have to say that dorm food, no matter where you are, is going to get tiring after awhile. It is good over here at Illinois there are a lot of options outside of dorms. There is a lot of fast food that is close-by. There is Green Street which has good food. They have everything that you could want from fast food and a variety of different kinds of food. There is a huge variety of food going beyond the dorm. In the dorms, it’s just the same old stuff reoccurring. It gets you all your required nutrients and will get you through the day. It’s nice to complement that with food outside of the dorms. The dorms keep you going.

Student Body
I think that no matter where you go, the biology course load will be difficult. I think that here, at Illinois, they have good programs that help students out with the course load. I am in one of the Honor’s programs that help out with freshman because it gives extra time for discussion to reinforce the concepts. There are programs out there that help students cover all the necessary topics and help them deal with the course load. Being such a big school, it’s easy to get lost in all that they have. But if you are able to take advantage of what is in place, you will be just fine. You will be able to work through the difficult course load.

As far as professors go, they all have office hours. In a huge class, you may think you never want to go to office hours because the professor will never know you but they are a lot friendlier than you think. While I don’t have a lot of professors knowing me on a first-name basis, I know that I can go into office hours and build those types of relationships which I know will be important later when I am trying to get recommendations.

The business school is ranked highly along with many other areas of study. Business is very competitive over here. A lot of my friends who are business Majors go to a lot of job fairs where they have the opportunity to meet with future employers and basically get a lot of opportunities for studying business. With that being said, this summer I’ve taken up an internship that is related to business and the business school. That is because they bring a lot of powerful employers over here and get students thinking about their possible future in business.

In Closing...
One of the reasons I wanted to come to U of I is because of the party scene. It is ranked very highly. If you go out on the weekends, you can see that everyone is having a good time. It is a competitive school so people work hard during the week, and then on weekends. Some during the week are going out and having a good time. I like to visit some of the bars. I like Brothers a lot. Also, with the laws here, you are able to get into bars at 19. That leaves a lot more options as far as what you can do before you are 21.

As far as the organizations that are available at this school, there is basically everything that you could ever want to do. With the organization that I am involved in, I only have membership to the Indian Student Association. It really helps me get to know people with a similar background as myself. They also have a lot of cultural events. Since there are so many different organizations out there that are always doing things on this campus, there is always something to do and somewhere you can get involved. You can get to know a lot of great people that have similar interests as you.