Location: Valparaiso, Indiana. It's freakin cold here...
History: uuuhh... I guess I wasn't quick enough here, but dammit I've had this write-up in the works for several months now and it ain't going to waste now! Anyway, I won't repeat what's already been said here.
Academics: VU teaches a good number of study areas for its size (around 3,000 to 4,000 undergrads). This is one of the reasons why I chose to come here. The have: engineering college, business administration college, arts & sciences college, nursing college, and an honors college (named Christ College). They have a school of law too, but who cares about the law? And of course you can go to another country and learn their shit too, like Japan, Germany, Britain, among others.
Life at VU: It ain't bad. The food sucks (naturally)--and there's no all-you-can-eat cafeterias here! Anyway, it's a very beautiful 310-acre campus with an awesome church building in the middle of the new part of campus. It's huge. We use it as a land-mark, since we can see it almost anywhere on campus (and off).
Valpo is pretty big on the Greek thing. Frats and sororities are all over the place, and parties are held in at least a few of them every weekend (one or two every day, even). They host campus-wide parties as well, for fundraising of some sort or to spread a word.
We're pretty much in a college town where the only real source of entertainment comes from the Super Wal-Mart. Just don't do anything with the old janitors hanging around. They're a bunch of bitches. Anyway, if Wal-Mart doesn't have what you want (which is very, very rarely), then you'll have to drive to Merrivile, which is about 20 minutes away. And if you can't find what you want there, then it doesn't exist. Every chain store in existence is there. So is every restaraunt. But if you're still bored, Chicago is only about 45 minutes away. The only problem is actually getting off campus. It's really hard if you don't even have a bike (like me) and your friends who own cars just don't want to use them. It's like, what the fuck. You have a car, you use it. Or should. Dammit...
Speaking of cars, the parking lots are full during the week, but after Firday around noon, they suddenly dissappear, and the campus is empty. Everyone leaves on the weekend. Why? Beats the shit out of me. I travelled 1300 miles to get here for one reason: to get away from home. A lot of kids go home for the weekend for some stupid reason. Not even free food and travel could temp me to go back home. I want to be on my own, and this is it. Freeeeeeedooooomm!!!
Some other info about this place for students and the curious alike....
The nerds here (Electronic Information Services) suck ass. They're flat-out morons. Ask a friend if you need computer help. The EIS will just tell you to uninstall your firewall and any p2p programs you have. According to them, "anything peer-to-peer is bad"...
The cafeterias close when they say they're open. The Round Table is your only hope of on-campus food before 11pm. And the food everywhere is ridiculously expensive.
Every weekday at around 3 or 5pm (depending on the season), a bunch of guys get together and play Ultimate Frisbee behind the VUCA. We usually get two games going since around 20 people show. We have enough nice, huge lawns to accommodate us all.
For the curious, our mascot is a Crusader. A stupid one. But I don't really see it around all that much, so I'm not too bothered by it. It looks gay though.
We're coed by floor at Valpo--we like it...
The ratio here is an amazing 60-40. Us dudes are quite a bit out-numbered. We like that too.
Sources: http://www.valpo.edu/