Emanon14

I can't say anything about Purdue but I did an BS/MS in Mech at RPI so I'll throw you my 2 cents on that. As you said, Troy is a shit hole but it's a selective shit hole. The campus area is beautiful, East Troy is a comfortable suburb type area, and the downtown is currently undergoing a heavy revitalization. Plus you have the whole capital district to explore as well. So basically you never have to go near the shitty areas unless you want to for the most part. Culturally, since it's a small, almost entirely STEM based institution the student body tends to be close and extremely nerdy. You're not going to get the experience of interacting with liberal arts majors but the void is filled somewhat by a huge variety of clubs. So if being surrounded by stereotypical engineering nerds is your thing then you'll probably fit in just fine. The biggest negative that I can actually comment on is the administration. The president and her cohorts aren't exactly the most popular people on campus at the moment. Luckily the students are mostly isolated from that. All you'll have to do is deal with some backroom complaining and questions of why X was built instead of fixing the chairs in building Y. Obviously I'm a bit biased but I hope this helps.