Chicago, Illinois · Students

Making friends as a student in Chicago, Illinois.

Campus by campus: how to actually make friends while you study in Chicago, Illinois.

Nobody warns you that a big city can be the loneliest place to study. You arrive with a timetable, a room and a few hundred strangers, and everyone assumes friendship will happen automatically. On a commuter campus, in a graduate cohort, or as an international student landing three weeks before term, it usually does not.

What works is unglamorous and repeatable: pick two or three things that meet at the same time every week, go to all of them, and be the person who suggests food afterwards. Repetition beats charisma. Proximity beats apps. Being the organiser — even a bad one — beats waiting for an invitation.

These guides are written per campus, because Chicago, Illinois campuses could not be more different from each other. A vertical tower in the Loop, a lakefront quad, a commuter school on the far South Side and a small residential college in the suburbs each need a different first move. Find yours below, then use the city guides at the bottom for the cafés, cheap food and weekly clubs worth building a routine around.

Big research campuses

Large, intense and full of people who arrived from somewhere else.

University of Chicago · Hyde Park

Making Friends at UChicago: Hyde Park, House Culture and the Life of the Mind

UChicago's social life is intense, specific and easy to misread. The friendships are there — in your house, your RSO and the coffee shops of Hyde Park — but nobody hands them to you.

Northwestern University · Evanston

Making Friends at Northwestern: Evanston, the Lakefill and the Train to Chicago

Northwestern gives you a residential lakeside campus in Evanston and a city forty minutes down the Purple Line. Most students use one and forget the other.

UIC · West Loop

Making Friends at UIC: A Commuter Campus Social Playbook

UIC is one of the most diverse campuses in America and one of the easiest to disappear into. Here is how to build a real social life when half your classmates leave for the Blue Line the moment class ends.

City campuses

No quad, no bubble — the neighbourhood does the work a campus usually does.

DePaul University · Lincoln Park

Making Friends at DePaul: Lincoln Park, the Loop and Everything Between

DePaul splits its life between a leafy Lincoln Park campus and a vertical Loop campus. Knowing which one you belong to — and how to use the other — is most of the social battle.

Loyola University Chicago · Rogers Park

Making Friends at Loyola Chicago: Lake Shore, Rogers Park and the Red Line

Loyola has the rarest thing in Chicago higher education — a campus on the lake with a real residential community — and a neighbourhood, Rogers Park, that rewards anyone willing to leave it.

Columbia College Chicago · South Loop

Making Friends at Columbia College Chicago: Collaboration Is the Social Life

At an arts school in the South Loop with almost no traditional campus, your crew comes from crews: the people you shoot, record, design and perform with.

SAIC · The Loop

Making Friends at SAIC: Studio Culture in the Middle of the Loop

The School of the Art Institute has no campus and no team — it has studios, critiques and a museum attached. That is more than enough social infrastructure if you use it.

Illinois Tech · Bronzeville

Making Friends at Illinois Tech: Bronzeville, Studios and Small Cohorts

Illinois Tech is small, technical and international, with a Mies van der Rohe campus on the South Side. The friendships come from cohorts, labs and teams — plus a neighbourhood worth exploring.

Roosevelt University · The Loop

Making Friends at Roosevelt University: A Vertical Campus in the Loop

Roosevelt's campus is a tower on Michigan Avenue with the whole city at its feet. Small classes and a social-justice tradition make the friendships easier than the architecture suggests.

Public and commuter schools

Where most students work, commute, and need a plan that fits a timetable.

Northeastern Illinois University · Albany Park

Making Friends at NEIU: The Commuter School Survival Guide

Northeastern Illinois University is one of the most diverse and most commuter-heavy campuses in the country. Building a social life here is entirely doable — it just has to be scheduled.

Chicago State University · Far South Side

Making Friends at Chicago State: Community, Commuting and the Far South Side

Chicago State is small, historically Black and almost entirely commuter. The friendships here are built on programmes, organisations and shared purpose rather than dorm floors.

City Colleges of Chicago

Making Friends at City Colleges of Chicago: A Commuter's Playbook

Harold Washington, Wright, Kennedy-King, Malcolm X, Truman, Olive-Harvey, Daley — seven campuses, one problem: everybody leaves right after class. Here is how to build a social life anyway.

Small and suburban

Small enough that you are a familiar face in weeks — if you leave your room.

North Park University · North Park

Making Friends at North Park University: A Small Campus in a Big City

North Park is small, residential and tucked into a quiet north-side neighbourhood by the river. Small is an advantage — but only if you leave the campus sometimes.

Saint Xavier University · South-west side

Making Friends at Saint Xavier University: Small, Close and South-West Side

Saint Xavier feels almost suburban: lawns, small classes and a tight community on Chicago's south-west side. The friendships come fast; the city takes a little more effort.

Concordia University Chicago · River Forest

Making Friends at Concordia University Chicago: River Forest, Small Classes, Big City Nearby

Concordia sits in leafy River Forest, ten miles west of the Loop. Small and residential means friendships come easily — as long as you also learn the Green Line.

Whoever you are

Not every student arrives the same way.

International students, graduate cohorts, first weeks and the strange year after graduating — the situations that need their own plan.

Making Friends in Chicago After Graduating

4 min

Where your campus actually is.

Campus life ends at the gate. These are the neighbourhoods around it, and how people meet each other there.

The Chicago, Illinois city guide