North Carolina College Road Trip: North Carolina State University--Raleigh
North Carolina State University--Raleigh is situated in the heart of the swing state's political action, adjacent to the headquarters of both North Carolina's Republican and Democratic parties and just a couple miles from the state capitol building in downtown Raleigh. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump held campaign events on campus and nearby just before last year's election.
The culture at the school, which draws about 87 percent of its roughly 23,800 undergrads from within the state, reflects both the political divide and a willingness to listen to diverse viewpoints, students say.
"There are some people who think this way, and there are some people who think that way," says 2017 grad Bianca Pearson, a history major from Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. But for the most part, students are generally "very open" to hearing new perspectives, she says.
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About 127 bachelor's programs are available to undergraduates. The university also enrolls approximately 10,000 grad students.
Incoming students select a first- and second-choice program of study, since admission to certain majors, such as those in engineering and design, is competitive.
Undecided freshmen can choose exploratory studies to start. No one is locked in, since you can apply to other programs once on campus, says senior Madison Hoell, of Bozeman, Montana. She switched her major from animal science to communications in an "incredibly easy" process last year, and she still expects to graduate on time. Because colleges have different requirements, the ease of the process will vary.
Adjacent to the main undergraduate campus is Centennial Campus, a center of technology and research that is home to most of the College of Engineering's facilities and the College of Textiles, where students can study medical fabrics such as scrubs and artificial skin and technical textiles like seat belts and firefighter uniforms.
The campus houses offices for more than 70 businesses, nonprofits and government agencies, including LexisNexis, the North Carolina Military Foundation and the National Weather Service, giving students a range of places to look for research opportunities, jobs and internships.
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Between obligations, undergrads can study at Centennial's state-of-the-art library, where a robotic system retrieves books from the collection.
Shraddha Rathod, now a senior, really likes the university's "think-and-do" mentality. "We don't just talk about it, we actually do things and make things," says Rathod, an electrical and computer engineering major from Charlotte.
For example, during her junior year, she took an Introduction to Embedded Systems class in which students created working toy cars. It was probably her most difficult and time-consuming class during college, she says, but she learned "so much" by actually building a system and not just listening to a professor talk about it.
Outside of academics, there's plenty to do both on and off campus. The 900-plus student organizations include everything from Genetics Club and Disney Film Club to a chapter of the American Meteorological Society. About 15 percent of students participate in Greek life. Twenty-three NCAA Division I sports teams, known as the Wolfpack, draw plenty of fans.
Off campus, students frequent Raleigh restaurants, nightlife and cultural institutions, including the North Carolina Museum of Art and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
Starting this fall, most first-year students will be required to live on the university's 2,099-acre campus. While student housing is available to all full-timers, many upperclassmen choose to live in the surrounding area, a diverse community that also draws professionals from around the world to multinational employers such as Cisco Systems and IBM.
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This story is excerpted from the U.S. News "Best Colleges 2018" guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
Alexandra Pannoni is an education digital producer at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at apannoni@usnews.com.
