<p>I’m an up and coming senior interested in applying to Notre Dame, and besides the city it resides in, all I’ve heard are the good things about Notre Dame, most notably the beautiful campus.</p>
<p>So what are things you dislike about Notre Dame?</p>
<p>Good question. I cannot think of anything major but I will list a few things that come to mind.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Unusually high cost of books at bookstore.</p></li>
<li><p>After it rains most sidewalks tend to flood.</p></li>
<li><p>Like anywhere you go, you often run into people in certain departments who are impossible to work with.</p></li>
<li><p>A lot of people smoke on campus. Nothing against smokers but every time I stepped outside my dorm somebody was always smoking a cigarette.</p></li>
<li><p>Cost of food on campus is pricey.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That’s all I can think of. None of the stuff I mentioned is a major problem and I could probably live with them again if I chose.</p>
<p>In reference to #4: I was actually surprised at how few people I thought smoked. After visiting and having friends at places like Chicago, Northwestern, UIUC, etc, I assumed a larger percentage would smoke. I rarely see too many people lighting up on sidewalks. Sometimes they cluster near the entrance to a dorm, but usually I saw this on friday and saturday nights, as smoking (in college) usually happens while drinking.</p>
<p>I agree with Clock, very few students smoke at ND compared with other colleges.</p>
<p>Do you feel you need a car? Where do you go to shop for toiletries, snacks, etc? Is there anything in walking distance?</p>
<p>It might have been asked somewhere else, but what is the surrounding city like? Any clubs or anything?</p>
<p>I am not a ND student or alum, but maybe you’d like an outsider’s perspective?</p>
<p>(a) In recent years, most of the top 25 schools have become more and more selective. For example, HYPS have seen their acceptance rates plummet to the single digits. Meanwhile, ND’s selectivity have remained stagnant. In fact, for this incoming class, it has actually risen to 27%.</p>
<p>(b) ND is notoriously homogeneous. Obviously, there is a lack of religious diversity. But, also there is little to no socio-economic and racial/ethnic diversity. For example, African Americans, many of whom are recruited athletes, make up only 3% of the ND student body.</p>
<p>(c) The academics are underwhelming. None of ND’s departments are very highly ranked, not even “religious studies.”</p>
<p>(d) The location is highly undesirable. South Bend is a dying rust-belt industrial town with lousy weather, to boot.</p>
<p>(e) ND is known more for football than academics. In fact, without football, most people would have never heard of ND, let alone think it’s a good school. There are consequences to prioritizing football. The face of your university is a morbidly obese, foul-mouthed, pompous a$$. Also, ND’s existence as a football factory compromises its academic integrity. Many of the ND football players can’t break four digits on their SATs if their lives depended on it. The fact that most of them actually graduate says something about the quality of the ND curriculum.</p>
<p>You make a lot of generalizations. Mind sharing your data that led you to these conclusions?</p>
<p>ND has higher academic standard for its student athletes than just about any other D1 school. Also, in response to a previous post, I can just about count on 1 hand the number of smokers I’ve seen on campus. I actually recognize them by face now. Of course there’s more than 5, but its a really small number, as students are very health and image conscious generally.</p>
<p>Remember that rankings and academic quality do not always go hand in hand; that being said, ND has been ranked very highly in many areas, not least of which is Business.</p>
<p>As happymed said though, he/she is not a student or alum, and thus would not be expected to provide a completely accurate view of the university. I don’t have dome goggles on either, but that portrait is quite negative, even unreasonably so. I agree with location being subpar, but the campus itself is incredibly beautiful.</p>
<p>There are a handful of clubs/bars in the surrounding area, and students do go, but not in the high percentage you would find at say, a big ten state school.</p>
<p>Sorry if that post seemed rambling, I just wanted to address the concerns of a different number of posts.</p>
<p>Haha oh man, I love this. Okay, for anyone who just read happymedstudent’s post, take a look at the other posts he or she has made on CC. Specifically in the Duke forum. It’ll be an exercise in observing somebody who harbors negative views just because. For somebody who claims not to really have any relationship of sorts with ND, happymed sure has a lot of things to say. And some of them are important things to address, so I definitely will. And anyone who knows more about any of the individual points than I do, feel free to jump in.</p>
<p>(a) HYPS have had single digit admissions for a few years now. Well, maybe not Stanford, I’m not entirely sure on that one. So if you’re looking at “recent years” as you claim, you’ll notice that in that same time period ND used to accept more than 30% of applicants not even a few years back. Since then, the school has had acceptance rates less than 25%. Though I can’t cite a specific source (I notice you mentioned none for any of your points, so I assume I’ll be allowed the some latitude with my statements), I’m pretty sure an article I read mentioned ND accepting more students EA (we draw some of our best students from EA) this year due to the economic situation–more students wanted to know if ND would be realistic financially and they wanted to know very soon. Another thing to consider is that two new dorms have been added within a period of a year of each other. For the time being, ND is able to educate more students because a few hundred (again, not entirely sure on the numbers here) residential spaces very recently could be filled on campus. Some schools are notorious for playing the USNWR rankings game (WashU in St. Louis is one example), but ND hasn’t really obsessed over it. Whenever press releases state that we’re doing well in the rankings, the admissions office basically replies “That’s great, but it’s not really the point.” We’re just doing our best to be a better school. But nobody said that our goal was to be HYPS. We have our own character.</p>
<p>(b) It’s not unfair to expect a bit less religious diversity at a Catholic university, as you seem to have implied. And as much of our student body is Catholic, it reflects in our student body composition. Yes, there are more white and Latino/Hispanic students. This is not to say that our current racial composition is okay as stands. The administration is making efforts, though, but it makes it especially hard to draw the most outstanding African-American applicants when ND is stereotyped as a school that doesn’t care about diversity. You have to understand that we have to fight the built-in attrition of African-American applicants based on pre-conceived notions of ND as well. If you follow the Observer articles about our incoming classes, you’ll notice that racial/ethnic diversity has increased with every admitted class. I think you understand that this is something that can’t just be changed overnight or in one round of admissions. I’m likewise concerned that the stat you mentioned about 3% of students being African-American may be dated. Your source might have taken that from a study done in 1999, which would not be an accurate picture about the state of diversity 10 years later. Not accusing you, I just want to know the source. You also need to be careful when choosing your words… “little to no socio-economic and racial/ethnic diversity”? You’re venturing off into hyperbole when you say that a place has “no” diversity of certain types. Simply not true. Also, as somebody from the lower-middle class, I’d like to point out that ND is not a school just for rich kids. My family does not make much money and we have to work very hard. When I applied to ND, I got a half-tuition scholarship and financial aid on top of that. A lot of students work jobs while in school. I did. Quite a few of my friends did. So it’s not like I’m some rare anomaly. I had friends from all ranges of the socio-economic spectrum. Yes, there are some VERY rich people who come to ND, but HYPS is exactly the same. That is how endowments happen and that is also how scholarships are able to be offered.</p>
<p>(c) I’m guessing you’re using ranking of GRADUATE programs to underscore this point. That is a mistake. Our graduate programs are not the best (although that’s not fully true… our creative writing program, medieval history, philosophy, and law school are all very well-known), and a large part of that is due to our focus on the undergraduate experience. Another prime example of a school that does this is Dartmouth… they also don’t have the best graduate programs, but they have phenomenal undergrad education. Our undergraduate programs are great! Then again, since you weren’t a student you wouldn’t really know this. But since you say our programs aren’t well ranked, I urge you to look up our rankings in business (we’re pretty on par with Wharton at UPenn if I remember correctly) and architecture (Ranked 11 or so?). You should know that undergraduate departments are generally not ranked very often, or sometimes at all… the metrics for doing so are less clear than they are for graduate programs. And you should also know that good graduate programs don’t necessarily translate to undergraduate programs being good. As far as the sciences go, we have a med school acceptance rate that is well above the national average, and our students go off to some of the top schools (yes, even your prized Ivies). And for those not wanting to do med school, many of us go on to fantastic graduate schools.</p>
<p>(d) Location is what you make of it. Yes, South Bend sucks. But we’ve slowly started to bring life to the town again. I also challenge you to find me an Ivy that has good weather. And as for towns sucking, what about Yale? New Haven?! Really?</p>
<p>(e) Haha NOW your true colors are showing! This part of your rant is my favorite part, where you just resort to name-calling. Your lovely Ivies recruit athletes who are dead in the brain as well or who otherwise couldn’t have hacked it when it came to admissions time. And they graduate, too. You’d be interested to know that ND knows exactly what it’s doing by having such a great football reputation. The money we make from it helps fuel our academic programs. In fact, we channeled TONS OF MONEY from one of our bowl games toward the construction of Jordan Hall of Science, which helped IMPROVE our academics. So your assertion that our football program exists at the expense of academics is just laughable. We make tons of money from it. I also think it’s hilarious that you’re also looking at the football team as microcosm representing the academic ability of the university as a whole. You wouldn’t pass Logic 101, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>Everyone, this person obviously has a bone to pick with ND. Not sure what it is, but the post was hilarious to read. Especially where it got so bitter and nasty at the end! I eat this stuff up for breakfast.</p>
<p>very detailed response talkingincode. thanks for clearing things up!</p>
<p>Sure thing. I had to clear the air before that post started festering and giving people the wrong idea.</p>
<p>Also in re-reading my post, I just wanted to make sure people knew I’m not trying to claim football players are dumb. Had one in some of my classes and he was crazy smart. Another thing is that profs are asked to report back to the athletics department to let them know how each of the athletes is doing in class. If an athlete gets a degree from ND, it’s because he or she actually had to do the work. The athletics department makes sure of it.</p>
<p>Another good post, TalkingInCode.</p>
<p>In response to some of the earlier questions:</p>
<p>You can buy most of what you need as far as toiletries and snacks go at the Huddle on campus. It is overpriced, but you can use your Flex Points there.</p>
<p>There are several bars in South Bend. The only one I’d really consider a club though is Fever. Additionally, due to Indiana liquor laws, there are no places that allow anyone under 21 to enter (i.e. you won’t find any 18-to-enter, 21-to-drink establishments). There is Legends on campus (which has special exemption to this rule), but it’s really only worth going on hip hop night. Because of this, those who are under 21 spend most of their time at dorm or house parties. If you have a fake ID, there are certain places you can get in, depending on the quality of your fake. There aren’t really any places in South Bend that are worth the risk of getting caught though…</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply, TalkingInCode. I’m glad you ate my post for breakfast. See, I’m such a nice guy that I didn’t even charge you for the meal. Curious about some of the things you said though, so let me share my thoughts.</p>
<p>“Some schools are notorious for playing the USNWR rankings game (WashU in St. Louis is one example), but ND hasn’t really obsessed over it.”</p>
<p>I don’t appreciate that school’s shenanigans either. Still, it must be disheartening to be outranked by a no-name also-ran like WUSTL.</p>
<p>“But nobody said that our goal was to be HYPS.”</p>
<p>That’s understandable. Why seek the unattainable?</p>
<p>“The administration is making efforts, though, but it makes it especially hard to draw the most outstanding African-American applicants when ND is stereotyped as a school that doesn’t care about diversity.”</p>
<p>This begs the question. Why is ND stereotyped as a school that doesn’t care about diversity? Perhaps there is some truth to that stereotype? What efforts is the ND administration making. </p>
<p>In recent years, HYPS has expanded their financial aid policies to promote diversity such that lower-income students essentially attend for free. Stanford, in particular, founded Questbridge, which identifies and matches underprivileged students for the admissions office. Other top schools such as Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Williams, etc. have joined this program.</p>
<p>Again, what has ND done in terms of diversity?</p>
<p>“But since you say our programs aren’t well ranked, I urge you to look up our rankings in business (we’re pretty on par with Wharton at UPenn if I remember correctly).”</p>
<p>Except for Wharton, undergraduate business programs aren’t widely respected. (Most people don’t even know the name of ND’s business school.) HYPS, for example, doesn’t bother to offer an undergraduate business degree because it is considered vocational training.</p>
<p>“New Haven?! Really?”</p>
<p>Yes, New Haven sucks almost as much as South Bend. But then again, Yale >>> ND.</p>
<p>“Your lovely Ivies recruit athletes who are dead in the brain as well or who otherwise couldn’t have hacked it when it came to admissions time.”</p>
<p>You’re right. HYPS does give recruited athletes preferential treatment in admissions. That being said, they couldn’t even touch some the football players that ND recruits. I don’t know how closely you follow college football recruiting, but if you do, you’d know that academically speaking, ND football players are closer to SEC than Ivy quality.</p>
<p>“So your assertion that our football program exists at the expense of academics is just laughable.”</p>
<p>If you read more closely, you’d realize that I said no such thing. I said that your football program comes at the expense of academic INTEGRITY. This is because you’re willing to sacrifice academic standards for the sake of fielding a (not so) competitive team. ND goes pretty far down the slippery slope.</p>
<p>“I also think it’s hilarious that you’re also looking at the football team as microcosm representing the academic ability of the university as a whole. You wouldn’t pass Logic 101, that’s for sure.”</p>
<p>Again, I did not say this. In fact, I fully admit that ND football players are generally bigger dumba$$es than the rest of your student body.</p>
<p>Undergrad business programs are well respected; if you get your info from CC posters though, I guess you might have another impression. And ND’s business school was only renamed Mendoza a few years back because of a large donation, though if you think recognition of a name on a business school is indicative of quality, you’ve got a lot more problems.</p>
<p>ND has done tons in terms of diversity. Just because it may not have the PR’d name brand program Questbridge or whatever, means nothing. Case and point, here is a quote from the parents of a top football recruit last year: “People told me that the school was prejudiced and that they’re weren’t a lot of black kids there, but we never felt that,” Nelson said. Darius’ father said that it’s a case of uninformed people. “I hate when people talk about things they don’t know about,” he said. “If you’ve never been to a place how can you talk bad about it? People don’t know what they’re talking about, because it’s nothing like that.”</p>
<p>You, sir, are one of those people who doesn’t know what he is talking about.</p>
<p>As far as diversity and minority recruitment are concerned I am aware of a couple programs that really stand out.</p>
<p>The Balfour Program is designed to assist minority students in the transition from high school to the rigorous academic life at ND. It is my understanding that many of these students receive generous scholarships and significant financial aid. In addition, these students also have a network of students and faculty who they can rely on for continued support and mentoring.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.nd.edu/~balfour/Mission.html]Mission[/url”>http://www.nd.edu/~balfour/Mission.html]Mission[/url</a>]</p>
<p>The Upward Bound program is another program that greatly benefits minority and local students who seek to pursue higher education.</p>
<p>I am sure there are other programs out there. Perhaps some of my fellow posters can think of others.</p>
<p>“Again, what has ND done in terms of diversity?”</p>
<p>Let’s be honest. There are a relatively small number of black (and by “diversity”, I assume you are using the code word for “black”) students with the academic qualifications to be accepted to AND succeed at a top 25 university. Those students are in great demand. To the extent that HYPS, with their enormous endowments and name recognition, develop programs to attract such students, they are necessarily taking them away from the other top schools. Notre Dame, with an 85% Catholic student body, is already at a disadvantage in attracting black students, who make up a relatively small share of the Catholic population in this country. And then there is the small town, midwestern location that is a hard sell to many prospective students (of all colors) from major metropolitan areas.</p>
<p>who cares so much about diversity? it does not make the college experience that much different. i am from CA, bay area, one of the most diverse areas in the world, and i have no idea why it is such a big deal. i barely even noticed any difference (except when people went out of their way to point it out) and i don’t think it changed your educational experience at all. look, ND does have people from every race, so you get the full effect of the organizations they are part of, you can go to cultural events, and i really just don’t understand why diversity would be so forced. do you really think it’s better for the school to pay people of a certain race to go to the school just so you can get diversity up? no, the best school has people there because they strongly desired to go there and (other than financial aid if needed), the money did not matter. that’s how you create a strong school that is truly interested in what the school has to offer.</p>
<p>The undergrad business program was ranked second in the country by U.S. News, behind only UVA. This put it ahead of Penn, Cornell and MIT for undergrad business. I visited both Cornell and MIT business schools with my S last summer and I’m glad he is going to be at ND.
I spent last Saturday night on campus in the Morris Inn and it was a great experience. The shopping and dining options available in the University Park Mall area have grown five to ten fold in the last 25 years. When the new Eddy Street Commons opens across from campus, the options available within walking distance for the students will grow greatly and will add to the game day experience for football games.
Granted, South Bend is a mid-size midwestern town and always will be. It has the advantage of having a major university within its borders and that brings in many cultural and sporting events that other similar sized towns don’t have.
We visited schools like Brown, MIT, Cornell, Chicago, Tulane, SMU and Rice in the last year and frankly the only ones which could come close to matching the ND campus are Cornell and Rice. Rice is like a half size ND campus and Cornell is a unique location, albeit wrapped around the top of a hill. If your student is going to spend 95% of their time on campus, shouldn’t it be the beauty and safety of the campus, combined with the focus on undergrad education (vs. grad students) that matters most? Some students want the lights and attractions of Chicago or New York. Those students should not head to South Bend and expect to find that type of lifestyle. Since a trip to Chicago is only a 90 mile bus or train ride away from South Bend, it is much closer to the action than Cornell is in Ithaca.
Unless you have visited the campus and soaked up the atmosphere, do not judge Notre Dame from afar.</p>
<p>absolutely terrific post numbersguy! those are some of the facts that i always present to someone when they argue the regular arguments including the fact “notre dame is in the middle of nowhere.” i completely agree</p>