The Minnesotans making fun of ISU/Ames would be funny if this were a rarer belief. Ames isn’t Minneapolis, but it’s college town with the amenities a college town of 70,000 people has. Some people prefer that, including myself.
And then, of course, there’s the academic slights, which is belief you’ll find in Eastern Iowa as well. The only differences between ISU and Minnesota are that ISU’s mission doesn’t include med and law, and Iowa public colleges don’t send lower scoring local students to satellite campuses. And despite lacking all the money, research and prestige that comes with a med school, ISU is one of only a handful of non-med school universities in the AAU. We’re a very high research output university, and have to be to maintain our AAU status. On a pound for pound basis, I’m 99% certain we produce more research than UM and Iowa. The differences between ISU and Iowa are more structural, but the quality is again essentially the same. It’s unfortunate that ignorance might keep good students from considering ISU.
