Heyo I'm an OOS student at a regional campus currently. Unfortunately you just gotta find an apartment complex that lets you lease online or through email/fax and just accept that you won't see the place unless you drag yourself up there early to check out your campus.
I leased the apartment I'm in online. Wasn't too thrilled with it, but it's not bad. Your experience may vary. Also, I visited once about a month before classes started to get a feel for the area. You may wish to as well.
Indy is the dream, but only sorta. Third year is stuffy because residents lie between you and the attending, much harder to get a good letter from an attending/to be noticed, but it gives you a good feel for a big academic institution. Bloomington and W. Lafayette are beautiful and cultural, but you won't find much time for that unfortunately. South Bend is... South Bend. Evansville is the academic all-star of the state (250 average step 1 in 2014 of their students, made all of our jaws drop--something about Evansville just yields killer scores year after year). Fort Wayne is probably the location to end up in if you don't land Indy: second largest metropolitan area, lots of docs, lots of specialists, lots of connections to be made, fantastic third year exposure, independent summer research program. Muncie is close to Indy, and Muncie/Terre Haute are great community/rural medicine programs.
If you want research, you're going to find it (over summer, maybe not at your campus). Unless you're okay with your grade dropping, you're not going to be doing hardly any research during the academic year anyway.
Good luck all.
