Ashley
The best thing about Loyola is its location. There are two main campuses within a short distance from one another, one located next to Lake Michigan, and the other a block away from Michigan Avenue (the Magnificent Mile) in the middle of downtown Chicago. Basically, you get the best of both worlds – a beautiful college campus environment next to the gorgeous lake, and the city life! Loyola is definitely not in a college town. Right outside the gates of Loyola, you either have Roger’s Park (a fairly dangerous neighborhood) or downtown Chicago, which is pretty amazing. However, there is one thing I would change – the weather. First of all, the weather is absolutely unpredictable, sometimes changing every five minutes. It might be raining, then snowing, then beautiful outside, and then some hail too – all in one day. One fall morning, the weather was so nice I went to class in flip flops. When class ended, I literally had to walk across campus in a blizzard.
The school is a perfect size, there are about 9600 undergrads. It’s small enough that you will recognize many people around campus, but big enough that you do not know everybody. I love the medium size compared to the size of a huge university because I feel more like an individual instead of a statistic. The staff is very helpful, and Loyola truly makes an effort to help students discover their passions. I came to college completely confused and scared about my future, but there were so many welcoming organizations and people who specifically wanted to help students like me find their niche. Also, I love that I can walk to class in under ten minutes on Loyola’s main campus. Definitely gives me more sleep in the mornings!
When I tell people from out of state that I attend Loyola, they usually have never heard of the university. However, people from Illinois and surrounding states always recognize Loyola for its academic reputation, and I always hear good things.
Recently, I’ve spend most of my time at the Richard Klarchek Information Commons, which we like to call the IC. It is a brand new all-glass building on the edge of Lake Michigan where students have access to a coffee shop, computers, and huge, comfy leather chairs overlooking the lake. Students seem to love the IC, it’s the perfect place to get work done. Other than that, I like to hang out in my dorm downtown. It’s a new, apartment-style residence hall located a block away from the John Hancock building and amazing Chicago restaurants and stores.
Recently, there have been strong student complaints about racial profiling on campus. The other day, an anti-racist group at Loyola marched against administration for their lack of concern for these problems. As a minority, I have never had a specific encounter with racial profiling, nor do I know anybody who has, but there have been several severe instances that need to be addressed. Other than these issues, students seem happy with their experiences at Loyola.
Ross
Although only a sophomore at Loyola to tell all my experiences at this school would take a lifetime. With that in mind, I will recount one story that is particularly for me.
It was the first week of my freshman year and I was in my dorm room. I was rather pleased with it as I recall. It was the corner room on the 9th floor of my dormitory and had a great views of both the city skyline and the lake. I was still getting settled in. My roommates and I were putting away the last of our stuff: hanging posters, stacking books, hooking up our electronics and the like.
There was a loud knocking at the door and our RA Joe walked in saying only one word: "Halo." I was soon plugging my xbox into the dorm's LAN network for a multi player death match in Microsoft's legendary game franchise Halo. 16 of us on the 9th floor combated each other in cyber arenas firefighting in ranked death matches. That day began a daily ritual for the 9th floor.
Every day around 5 pm when classes were over we would all plug in and play. As I look back my RA Joe was a genius. There was no better way for all the guys on his floor to meet each other and hang out than get them addicted to a competitive video game. It was at most a week before I knew everyone on my floor and their life stories to boot.
I have forgotten a few of their life stories now, but I will never forget their names. I will certainly never forget their screen names. We all called each other by the names of our avatars. They all hilarious and I could hear the names Sextor, Toddler Fondler, Lizard King being shouted down the hallway after every victory and defeat.
While on the surface this experience may seem trivial and insignificant. Nothing could be further from the truth. Halo got everyone on the 9th floor interacting with one another right away. When you're in a new place and don't know anyone that kind of interaction is paramount on your priority list.
Brandon
The best thing about Loyola is the location. Hands down, I don't think you can beat the views that Loyola has to offer with the beautiful Lake Michigan as the eastern border of the entire Loyola campus. The Information Commons, Mertz Hall, and Loyola's beach offer a really pleasant view, even on a rainy day. The fact that Loyola is a 25 minute ride away from downtown, and that Loyola has a downtown Campus is a pretty sweet deal as well as it offers a nice base to discover Chicago from, especially being two blocks west of the Magnificent Mile. The school also gets really good discounts on Chicago events such as Bulls games tickets, Wicked tickets, etc etc, and it also hosts two dances each year at unique places Downtown. This year there was a dance at the Navy Pier Ballroom and another held at the Drake hotel.
If I could change one thing it would be the way the Shuttle service between the two campuses is run. There needs to be a better form of streamlining how they run the operations. The shuttles follow a strict schedule of times to leave and arrive at the two campuses (Lake Shore and Water Tower Campus). However, the problem is that students tend to use the shuttles in clustered time periods so it would be much more beneficial to run the buses on a "fill the bus up and leave" schedule. This problem leads students to miss class or have to allot more time to get to class downtown.
I love the size of my school. It's a pretty small campus, even for a private school, but I feel the student body size is perfect for me. It is really beneficial as well in terms of class sizes. Some Gen Ed classes are around 100-120 students, but most Gen Eds I have taken are really small class sizes in the 20-40 range, which is awesome because the teachers are very very helpful and sincere for the most part, and we don't have to deal with TA's that much at all.
I spend a lot of my time these days at the newly built Information Commons. It is a $33 million dollar supplement to the library that is a state of the art (just opened in 2008)study, group study, and research facility that sits right in front of Lake Michigan that offers a panoramic view of the lake and a very very comfortable environment to study in. It comes equipped with a Cafe and in my estimate around 150 computers (Dell and Mac)for students to use. I do all my hw there now.
This is definetely not a "college town" per say. The lake shore campus is located in Rogers Park, a good 10-12 miles or so North of Downtown Chicago. It is located in a very ethnic neighborhood as are all Jesuit colleges. I wouldn't say this school however offers the stereotypical college experience in part because most students tend to live off campus after freshman year, and a lot of students are commuters as well. On the weekends this place seems like a ghost town sometimes.
I don't hold the highest regard for Loyola's administration. The only concern of the school seems to be money, and getting it as soon as possible from the students. They have really unhelpful rules here such as having a drop class date within seven days or so of the start of the semester. So basically after starting a class you have 1 or 2 classes to decide whether you want to drop it or not without getting a "W". Also, the academic advising here is pretty terrible. You basically have to be persistent and seek out advising if you want to make sure you get out of here in four years. I promise you that. I know a lot of people who won't graduate on time or will have to take a full credit load of classes the rest of the way to graduate in four years. The school doesn't seem to care about this problem, or the problem of lack of enough counselors (the business school has only 3 or 4 main advisors for about 1,000 students), mainly because it brings in more money.
I wouldn't say there is a lot of school pride here mainly because we aren't a big sports school. We have a very good Volleyball program, but other than that, all sports here are more a source of free entertainment. Most people at school are busy doing their own things.