The people you’ll be spending the most time with in college are other students. You’ll live (as a freshman, probably in very tight quarters), study, and spend your free time with them. So you need to decide what kind of student body you’re looking for. Would you want to be among a diverse group, with a lot international students maybe, or more homogenous? Would you prefer peers with a liberal reputation, conservative, or somewhere in-between? In reality, it’s impossible to define an entire student population in such sweeping terms. But this, say peers, you do need to know: Are the students happy?
“Talk to the people who are already enrolled in the school,” advises Evan Prendergast, a freshman business major at Central Michigan University, in Mount Pleasant. “When you’re visiting, go up to current students and ask them what they think.”
Ask them how they would describe students there, and anything else you want to know about, before committing. If you’re not planning to visit the school again, call the admissions office and ask for a student’s e-mail address.
