Students Claiming to Be from Chicago Suburbs Exceed Chicago Metro Area Population

Going into the new semester, you’ve likely had to listen to a lot of icebreakers recently, and those icebreakers have probably included stating where one is from. Therefore, you may have noticed that after Iowans, the predictably basic largest student demographic, perhaps the most common type of out-of-state student you’ll have encountered is the Chicagoan.

Not actual Chicagoans, of course. Those are like a needle in a haystack. No, what we mean are Chicagolanders—people from the suburbs, the metropolitan statistical area, if you will. People who rarely venture into the city for fear of it being infested with criminals. People who, despite identifying with a large, diverse city, appear to have never once interacted with a Black person. And people who, somehow, seem more populous here than Chicagoland would seem to allow.

A new demographic survey revealed that 10,023,976 University of Iowa students reported originating in the “suburbs of Chicago” — more than 400,000 higher than the population of the Chicago metro area as reported by the 2020 U.S. Census.

Even more mind-boggling is that number in comparison to the University of Iowa’s official student population of 32,199 as of fall 2024. You may be wondering, how can there be so many Iowa students from the Chicago suburbs if there aren’t that many people actually from the Chicago suburbs, let alone that many Iowa students?

This mystery has yet to be solved. At the very least, ordinary students can now rest easy knowing that this is why they seem to have so many goddamn students claiming to be from the Chicago suburbs. And if you are one of those students… let us know if you have any better idea than we do. Somehow, not one of you has ended up on our staff.