University of Notre Dame
- Diversity

What You Would Expect

Notre Dame, as everyone knows, is the top Catholic university in the nation. This is obviously going to attract a very narrow range of students and backgrounds, with similar values instilled within them before arriving to the university and, thus, most of the students coming from families that have similar work ethics and so on. But, although the university strives to attract academic and Catholic students, it also reaches out to other backgrounds and achieves this goal, to an extent. I am friends with many international students, those of different sexual orientations and even religious beliefs, despite what people might think of the diversity within that particular demographic. But, although there is diversity, it is not obvious if you do not, for the most part, actively seek out diversity. I am already a minority in a respect at the university, as I am Protestant, so I am aware of the diversity religiously on campus, and the university offers a lot in the way of promoting diversity, whether it be religious, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, etc.

White, Catholic

Notre Dame tries to diversify its student body. But it's applicant base is strongly white and Catholic (~85% of it's student body is Catholic). Pick a couple hundred applicants at random and you'll probably get a large amount of white, catholic students. That's just the way it is, and will be. Diversity is important, but if you accept someone into the university just because of their race and reject someone on the same grounds, that's wrong.

Well It Is a Catholic School

There are plenty of different races, poltiical beliefs, religions, and a suprising amount of diversity in sexual orientation. However, for the most part, the university is made up of rich white kids. There is very little economic diversity. There is, however, an overall attitude of acceptance of differences.