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

Loyola University Chicago''s Lake Shore campus does something no other Chicago university manages: it puts a green, walkable, residential campus directly on Lake Michigan, at the top of the Red Line. Students live there, eat there, run on the lakefront path there. If you are an undergraduate at Lake Shore, the ambient social life is already better than at most city schools.

The two things that trip people up are the Water Tower campus downtown, which feels like a different school, and the temptation to never leave the campus bubble in a neighbourhood — Rogers Park — that is one of the most interesting in the city.

What the campus is actually like

• Lake Shore campus is residential, compact and beautiful, with the lake as the eastern edge and the Loyola Red Line stop at the western one.
• Water Tower campus sits in Streeterville among the skyscrapers, serving business, law and several graduate programmes. It is a fifteen-stop train ride and a different social world.
• The Jesuit service tradition means volunteering, retreats and service-learning are built into student life and are unusually effective ways to meet people.

On campus: where friendships actually start

Residence life and the dining halls

If you live on campus, your floor is your first circle, and the dining halls are the second. Eat at the same time as the people you want to know rather than at the convenient time. This is a real strategy and it works.

Student organisations and service

Loyola runs a large slate of clubs plus service programmes, alternative break trips and campus ministry activities that are open to everyone regardless of faith. A service trip creates more friendship per hour than any other campus activity, because it is several days of shared work and no phones.

Sport and the Halas centre

Intramurals, club sport and the fitness centre give you the weekly repetition that friendships need. Loyola basketball also gives the campus something genuinely collective to care about in winter — turning up to games with other people is an underrated tactic.

The lakefront

The path outside campus is a free social asset. Running, walking or swimming with one other person is the most low-pressure way to turn an acquaintance into a friend, and a Chicago run club will happily absorb a student — see the best run clubs in Chicago.

Off campus: use Rogers Park

Rogers Park is the most demographically diverse neighbourhood in Chicago, with cheap food from a dozen cuisines, a strong arts scene and beaches with no tourists.

• Beaches. Loyola Beach and Pratt Pier are minutes away; the best beaches in Chicago guide has the rest.
• Food. Devon Avenue, Clark Street and Sheridan cover South Asian, East African, Mexican and Middle Eastern cooking at student prices.
• Neighbourhood life. The full picture is in making friends in Rogers Park, and Edgewater — one stop south — is covered in making friends in Edgewater.
• Bookshops and quiet places. See the best bookstores in Chicago for the north-side ones worth the walk.

If you study at Water Tower

Downtown students should build their social life around the cohort and the programme: study groups, professional societies and a standing pre-class coffee. Then pick one Lake Shore–based activity and commit to it, so you have a reason to be up north on a weeknight. Streeterville is also a short walk from the lakefront, the river and much of the city''s free culture.

Grad students, transfers and international students

Graduate students at Loyola often find campus ministry and service programmes the easiest doors, because they are open to all ages and require no prior group. Transfers should target clubs and intramurals rather than residence life. International students benefit from Rogers Park''s diversity more than almost anywhere in the city — there is a good chance food from home is a short walk away, and that is a conversation starter with your whole floor.

Your first term, in order

• Weeks 1–2: two commitments, one of them physical (sport, gym, running) and one social or service.
• Weeks 3–6: same meetings, same dining hall time, four names learned.
• Weeks 7–10: winter arrives and everyone hibernates. Keep one indoor commitment.
• Weeks 11+: take two people off campus — Clark Street dinner, a beach walk, a show downtown.

Common questions

Is Loyola Chicago a good school for making friends?

Yes, unusually so by Chicago standards, because Lake Shore is genuinely residential. The risk is the bubble, not isolation.

Where do Loyola students hang out?

The lakefront and campus quads in warm weather, the dining halls and Damen Student Center year-round, and Clark Street and Devon Avenue in Rogers Park for cheap food.

Is Rogers Park safe for students?

It is a normal dense city neighbourhood: busy, mixed and fine with ordinary urban awareness, especially along the well-lit main streets and near the Red Line.

How do I meet people if I live off campus?

Pick one campus commitment and one neighbourhood commitment. A weekly club plus a run club, gym class or volunteer shift covers both halves of your week.

What about meeting people beyond Loyola?

Start with the Chicago city guide and the best apps for making friends in Chicago.