Campus
As one of the largest campuses in the United States, Michigan State offers plenty to do and see right on campus. The Wharton Center provides a range of arts and entertainment, including Broadway shows, opera, touring comedians, and homegrown MSU productions. Fine art and history are on display at the Broad Art Museum and the MSU Museum, Michigan’s largest public museum of natural history and culture. Concerts often fill the Breslin Center with nearly as much noise as the MSU basketball games. With 23 varsity sports teams, there’s always an opportunity to Go Green, and the Rec Sports department provides plenty of ways to get in the action yourself through intramural sports, fitness classes, and exercise facilities. And on top of all of that, the MSU Dairy Store sells over 40 flavors of tasty, old fashioned ice cream made right on campus by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Living
There are many great options for housing around MSU. Affordable apartments and houses within walking and biking distance can be found in both Lansing and East Lansing. Check out Craigslist or MSU’s off campus housing page for more information. If you want to stay in thick of things, there are also on campus options such as apartments in Spartan Village and Owen Hall.
Getting around campus and the Greater Lansing Area is made easy with the award-winning CATA transportation service, which offers student bus passes and a full complement of campus friendly routes. MSU has also been designated a Bike Friendly Campus and offers a full service bike repair, rentals, and sales shop.
Greater Lansing Area
From the array of shops and restaurants along the north side of campus to farmers’ markets and foodie havens such as Soup Spoon in Lansing’s Eastside, there’s a lot going on around MSU. Greater Lansing is known as Michigan’s Festival Capital, with great events throughout the year such as the Great Lakes Folk Festival, East Lansing Art Festival, and the Moonlight Film Festival. Michigan is also home to an active craft beer scene with at least 142 local breweries, many of which are within an easy drive of Lansing or worth the trip further afield.
Sports fans can enjoy the Lansing Lugnuts minor league baseball games or the newly anointed Lansing franchise in the National Premier Soccer League. The Lansing River Trail provides 14 miles of woodland and riverside pathway through the city and campus, and it also swings by the Potter Park Zoo. Additionally, there are numerous state and local parks in the area offering hiking, canoe and kayaking, and mountain biking, and the sand dunes and beaches on the Lake Michigan shoreline 1.5 hours west are some of the Midwest’s best kept secrets.
Thinking about school districts? East Lansing Schools is a district that prides itself on excellence. They accept only the highest quailty of teachers and staff. East Lansing High School is currently ranked in the top 3 percent of public schools in the nation by US News and World Report. Your child(ren) will also have the opportunity to learn amongst a very highly diverse school, where students are from all corners of the world! East Lansing also works with MSU and hosts many student-teaching interns every year.
Additional Resources
The MSU Graduate School maintains an excellent Living in Lansing page.