Lilly Anderson fell in love with PNW’s feeling of community. 

When she first saw its small campus and small student enrollment, Anderson knew it was the school for her. 

The junior Accounting major spent her first two years studying at Purdue West Lafayette, which has a sprawling campus and nearly 60,000 students. It all proved to be too much.

“I’ve experienced a couple years of college on the West Lafayette campus, and can definitively say that the smaller classes, less busy offices and available seating around campus is a nice thing to have,” said Anderson. “My favorite thing about Purdue Northwest is the smaller campus community feel.

“In West Lafayette, I had large lecture halls where I was one student out of about 250 in the section and would frequently take exams in the Elliot Hall of Music, filling up the main floor and second balcony,” she said. “Here at PNW, I have 46 students in my biggest class. 

 “This created a more personalized and inclusive learning environment, which is part of why I transferred [to PNW],” Anderson said.With a core enrollment of about 6,000 students, PNW is significantly smaller than Purdue’s main campus.

Anderson also likes the fact that the smaller campus makes it easy to get to class. 

“I used to have to speed walk 15 minutes across campus to get to class [at West Lafayette],” she said. “Here I have all of my classes in two buildings that are practically next to each other.”

With the campus being smaller comes the perk of being able to find parking spaces in one of the Hammond campus’ 17 parking areas

“There are also plenty of parking spots,” said Anderson. “I have never been late to class or been left without a place to park.

“The short commute between class buildings and the amount of parking makes my days less stressful,” Anderson said. “With those things, PNW is setting their students up for success.”

The community that PNW has created is a great environment for students to succeed in.