These are nice things but also remember that Clemson is in the profound South, and if you’re from the North, there can be culture shock. Described to me within the past few weeks by Northerners who have spent a long, long time at Clemson:
- Many of the students may be OOS, but also a portion of the students haven’t ever been out of state a single time in their lives. They’ve never been on airplanes some of them. Again, there’s no criticism here, but if you’re used to a sort of worldliness in your peers–travel; languages; ethnic foods; cultural awareness and fluency; etc.–your son or daughter may be the source of information for others;
- Many of the women attend Clemson with the ambition of finding a husband, getting married, and becoming stay-at-home moms, not that there’s anything wrong with this, but be aware that being a woman and having career ambitions outside of the home may be less the norm there than it is in the North; this may affect the study habits of peers;
- The arts are painfully underfunded (and largely unnoticed) especially compared with Football. Football is king. And Football days can leave the campus rather dirty and worse for wear. Not to mention it strips other departments of resources;
- The science departments (science department) have some people who teach from a Christian/ creationist POV. I have no names to share;
- Over recent years, Clemson has become more and more conservative. One common career goal if you’re in, say, theater, is to want to do production for a megachurch. A new megachurch is being built down there.
Schools that were less this way, and in the same general geographic region, were UG in Athens and Emory.