As a student at Indiana University, I think it’s pretty clear which school is the better of the big ten league, there is no comparison because IU is just overall, in my opinion, amazing. It’s not that I think Michigan State University is a bad school in any way, I just like Indiana a lot. But I can’t just say this without any proof; it’s true that I haven’t visited the campus, or read up on their accomplishments, until this weekend. After watching the Michigan State/Indiana game a couple of weeks ago I was amazed that we won. I wanted to further prove that IU is the better school, so I traveled to Michigan State University. I have friends that let me stay with them for a couple of days over my fall break so I could investigate. As I was planning my trip I realized that both schools are huge, there was no way I could judge every aspect of the school in just a matter of days. I narrowed it down to just three things: On campus dining, street life, and of course, tailgating. These three things could be judged between the two schools fairly without having to do deep research on stats or accomplishments in the limited hours I was planning on being in East Lansing. Here’s what I found:
The first thing I saw the street called Grand River. For all the IU students reading this, Grand River is supposed to be like the Kirkwood of East Lansing. Walking down the road I saw many chain restaurants, bookstores, and MSU apparel shops. I wasn’t surprised until my friend told me that this is a well-known spot for people to go for drinks and shopping. The reason why I was surprised is because I couldn’t really picture it being a hotspot; in Bloomington, Kirkwood has everything, including bars, local restaurants and shops, and a couple of known retail stores. It’s a place where people of all ages can go and the experience isn’t limited. And of course there is the coveted Kilroys, that is a destination in Bloomington. The places I saw on Grand River wasn’t anything special, although I did go to a place called Conrad’s which is supposedly a great place for late night drunk food. But this didn’t change my opinion that much.
The next place I asked to go to was a dining hall. Their meal plans are different than ours; at MSU you swipe your card and get however much food you want once you’re inside, at IU you pay for what you want to eat. Their dining plan is nice because you’re not as limited with a points system, but I can definitely see myself trying to study then end up snacking all day there. With my meal plan here, I can still do that but it’ll cost me for sure. But hey, it’s good to have restrictions. However, I will give credit to their actual dining hall; it’s honestly so gorgeous. The one we ate at had a giant bay-view window in the back where you can see all of the colored leaves falling. I felt like I was in a real sit down place instead of a cafeteria. I would much rather eat there than at Wright food court.
Lastly, I judged the tailgating; here in Bloomington, Greek life tailgating goes something like this: the sororities and fraternities all pair up with one another and start their day at the assigned frat house. From there they all go to the tailgating fields, which is a giant lawn filled with white tents with the fraternities’ name on top of each tent. Everybody goes there to meet friends and hang out until they want to stop. Usually, people don’t really go to the actual football game. However at MSU, once you go to the respective house you stay there until you want to go to the game. The houses there are pretty spread out around campus, as far as I could tell, so if you wanted to see a friend you would have to coordinate a plan. I did notice that towards the end people were leaving so I turned to my friend to ask what was happening and she looked at me and said, “kickoff is soon.” That threw me through a loop; I guess I can’t really blame them, though.
My experience at MSU was a good one, I had a lot of fun there and I’m glad I got to explore another big ten school while I had the opportunity. I did miss Mother Bear’s pizza, and seeing the big triscuit in the sky we all call Wells Library and meeting up with friends at the fields. Hopefully, I can bring my rival school friends to Bloomington so I can show them the differences. Here is my final rating of both schools: MSU gets a 7/10, and IU as always gets a 10/10. Go Hoosiers!
