BYU is located in Provo, the third-largest city in the state of Utah, with over 115,000 residents. It is just south of the city of Orem, just north of Springville, and approximately 45 miles south of Salt Lake City. Provo is very much an LDS city—it was first settled in the mid-nineteenth century by a couple dozen Mormon families from Salt Lake, and today the city remains 88% LDS. Politically, Provo is the most conservative city with a population over 100,000 in the United States, according to a study released by the Bay Area Center for Voting Research. Racially, the city is predominantly white, with small African-American, Latino, and Asian American populations. The city is located at the base of the Wasatch Mountain Range and the white BYU “Y” looms large in Provo’s mountains. Provo-Orem is definitely a college town and there are many businesses that cater to the college crowd. There are dollar theaters which are almost always sold out on the weekends. Muse and Velour are two concert venues on University Avenue that have local bands on the weekends. There are two large indoor malls, University Mall and Town Centre Mall, and in north Provo there is an outdoor shopping area called the Riverwoods. Two classic restaurants frequently visited by students would be Costa Vida and Café Rio which are basically one in the same and have some great Mexican food. The Malt Shoppe and The Creamery on 9th are also great group date spots. If you’re looking for something other than a regular desert place you need to stop and try out Sub-zero for some ice cream and Pudding on the Rice for some flavorful rice pudding.

The approximately 560-acre main BYU campus in Provo, Utah is situated below the Wasatch Mountains, which are prominently marked with a large, white “Y” in rocks for the school. There are 311 buildings on the Provo campus in different architectural styles. One of the most famous buildings on campus is the Harold B. Lee Library, which has been called the finest college library in the nation, boasting 8.5 million items in its collections and almost a hundred miles of shelving. Another notable landmark is the Marriot Center, BYU’s basketball arena, which, at 22,000-plus seats is one of the largest in the nation. Many of the school’s departments are housed in the tallest building in Provo, the Spencer W. Kimball Tower, which is known as “the Swiggit” (the name is an acronym of the first letters of each word in the name of the tower). BYU’s campus is also home to a number of distinguished museums, including: the Museum of Art (one of the biggest and most popular art museums in the regiont the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum; the Museum of Peoples and Cultures; and the Earth Science Museum, which houses one of the best collections of artifacts from the Jurassic Period in the world. For students who prefer their fellow students to old fossils, there is Wilkinson Center (“the Wilk”), a campus center with venues for eating, socializing, and events. Artsy students tend to congregate at the HFACT, the fine arts building on campus. There’s also a creamery on campus, where BYU students can get ice cream.

Most, though not all freshmen live in dorms, though few undergrads live on campus thereafter. The university must approve of off-campus accommodations to ensure that they uphold the school’s principles, and has a relationship with local landlords to facilitate that process. There are four sets of dormitories on campus for single students. The Helaman Halls has doubles for men, suite doubles for women, and suite singles for both. The complex also has a pool, basketball, and sand volleyball courts, laundry, and a piano room. The Heritage Halls consists of two, four, and six person suites that have one bathroom per suite. Heritage Halls also has laundry, a computer lab, and courts for sand volleyball and other sports. Wyview Park has singles and doubles and includes a living room and a kitchen. The fourth option is Foreign Language Housing, which has three doubles for every apartment with a shared bathroom. The premise of Foreign Language House is that people who live there agree to only speak the foreign language of the house. It’s a full immersion in a foreign language which compliments BYU’s strong emphasis on language programs. A native speaker of the appropriate language lives in each apartment to facilitate learning. Wymount Terrace provides on-campus apartments for married students.

The BYU Cougars football team competes in the NCAA Division I-A Mountain West Conference. Football milestones include having gone undefeated and winning the National Championship in 1984 and Cougars quarterback Ty Detmer winning the Heisman Trophy in 1990. Most recently, the team has gone 10-2 and won the Las Vegas Bowl. The BYU men’s basketball team scored 36th in Street & Smith’s “100 Greatest College Basketball Programs of All Time.” The criteria were NCAA tournament success, National Invitation Tournament success, national championships, conference regular season and tournament titles, all-time win-loss percentage, graduation percentage, NCAA infractions, NBA first round draft picks, and, most intriguingly, mascot ferocity. As of this writing, BYU has the longest ongoing winning streak at home, having won 47 straight times at the Marriot Center. Other notable teams include men’s volleyball, who won the National Championship three times, women’s volleyball, which reached the Elite Eight in 2007, the rugby team, which has been the national runner-up for three years running, and the ballroom dance company, which is one of the finest dance teams in the world. BYU football is huge. Games are usually packed and filled with students, out-of-town fans, and locals. The slogan, “I bleed blue!” is a common phrase at sporting events. Men’s basketball and volleyball usually draw large crowds as well. Volleyball is always full and they usually have to turn people away. You’re lucky to get a good seat if you get there an hour early.