I am a student at Drake right now. I really like it here, and Drake is a good school for me. Pharmacy is the largest program here, I belive that 1/5 of the students are in the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences. Here are a few things about what it's like:
-As it was already mentioned, frats and sororities, along with the bars are huge here. However, there are also plenty of people who don't join them and/or don't go out to the bars. I had no problem meeting friends who weren't big on frat parties. Plenty of pharmacy students here are, though. Drake has two professional pharmacy fraternities (Phi Delta Chi and Kappa Psi) that are also popular.
-If you are into parties, but not fraternity or sorority parties, then you're out of luck. My roommate is transferring to U of I after this semester partly because she loves to party, but there's not a lot of parties outside of Greek parties or going to the bar.
-A lot of the people here are from bigger cities and think Des Moines is tiny, and there are also a lot of people who are from small towns and think Des Moines is huge. Des Moines is a little smaller than Minneapolis (and there's no St. Paul here, so it's definitely smaller than the Twin Cities). Most people end up thinking there is enough to do here unless they are from a really big city.
-Drake is not in the nicest neighborhood - it is different than what most students here are used to, but the campus is safe...it's really only a problem if you wander off campus alone, especially at night.
-I like the size of the campus because it is easy to get everywhere and you have no problem getting to your classes if you have one after another. Some of my friends at other schools need to take buses to get from chemistry to art class (or whatever), and I'd rather not do that! I also like it because I like getting to know people in my class, but it is big enough that you won't know everyone.
-People switch majors from pre-pharmacy to other things such as business fairly quickly. Others who decide not to continue with pharmacy transfer schools because pharmacy is why they came here. First year classes are not too difficult if you do your work and put effort into them. If you don't, though, it is hard to get by.
-There is enough work to do that you won't have a huge amount of free time, and when you do, there is usually enough to do. We just hang out in friends' rooms a lot, work out at the Bell center, and occasionally go out during the week. On the weekends, there are enough restaurants, malls, and things to. It does get pretty empty on weekends, though, because a lot of people go home or have weekend jobs.
I hope this helped...Good luck choosing a college!
