Student Profile
Kyle
- Class: Sophomore
- Major: Engineering
- Gender: M
- High School: Huntingtown High School
- Transfer Student: N
Big Picture
The best thing about Clemson is the football games. I can barely remember any home game I went to. Tickets are real easy to get since the stadium is huge, unlike some other schools. Clemson's a good size I think it's around 16,000, which is pretty good the campus is a good size I think. If you're looking for a huge school where you never see the same people twice unless you're friends with them then this isn't the place to go, you see the same people all the time around campus, it's a good community feel. The "town" of Clemson isn't really much. There's two or three bars downtown to go to but it's not a great college town. Like I said Clemson really isn't the party school a lot of people build it up to be. Clemson is also kind of in the middle of nowhere - Greenville SC is like a 40 min. drive, some people go there to club, or Atlanta's a 2 hour drive. There's so much school pride at Clemson that if you aren't insane about the Tigers or the color orange you'll probably want to get out after the first week.
Academic Life
Classes are good sizes - besides the intro lecture halls they usually stay at around 20 people. Speaking of the engineering department, they have a general engineering program for first year kids that sucks. It's not really hard but they're extremely hard graders and have really rigorous standards. It's really just to weed people out, I'm going into my sophomore year and I hear it gets a lot better after that first year. I wouldn't say students are extremely competitive - most of the redneck kids don't really care that they're in college they just get wasted in a field somewhere whenever they can. The out of state kids are a lot more competitive - it really depends on the major you choose, for instance engineering has a lot more out of state kids than something that agriculture would. I hear Clemson has really good job hookups after you graduate but I wouldn't really know for sure. There are a lot of internship and co-op opportunities which is always a good thing.
Student Body
Like I said Clemson has a really southern (conservative) student body. The stats about the percentage of out of state students are very misleading because a lot of kids are from like Georgia or Tennessee which is basically the same place as SC. Kids from the "North" are really kind of on their own. Never in my life had I been called a Yankee until I went to Clemson. The civil war is almost a daily topic of discussion, there's a lot of confederate flags around, and there are a lot of racists. I've lived in Maryland my whole life and I experienced some pretty big culture shock when I moved down there. The southern kids wear khakis and polos to class everyday, while the girls wear sun dresses most of the time. Again, if you're from a "northern" state you will be separated, but so will everyone else thats not southern, so it will be easy making friends with those kids. If you're looking for a school where it is all one big family Clemson is not the school for you. There is definitely a lot of separation between people from different backgrounds. The girls are hot though.
The Best Things
football
The Worst Things
racist rednecks, being called a yankee
