My 2 cents. I lived in Ames for two years (MS) and my impressions from early 1990s.
- People were very polite. Even the newscasters were very diffident when hoping for a Cyclones win the coming Saturday. Quite a flip when I moved to Austin (PhD), though the results during early/mid 1990s in Austin were not much better.
- As a foreign student, I volunteered to speak at various schools across central Iowa about different cultures, along with other foreign students. The community hosted us in their homes (one student per family), and it was a blast. The teachers told us that our visit was the talk of the town (population 500) for the whole week, and for most of the kids, we were the first non-whites they had seen in their lives. They showed us their weekly paper that was just about our visit and what they were planning. They took us to visit farms. When they saw my job drop at the size of the farm (>1000 acres) and the equipment, in their typical mid-western modesty (I think), they said that this is one of the successful farms and other farmers are not doing as well. At one time, my host, who was a pastor, had to go out because of a road accident and it was his turn to be a volunteer firefighter. After dinner they arranged for community activities. Once I remember we went tobogganing in the night at a nearby hill. They had hot chocolate, smores, etc.
- The cold was biting. I remember -40F with wind blowing snow horizontally and me trying to figure out where the sidewalk is. Summers were great. Biked everywhere.
- Lastly about ISU. Very pretty campus with great people. ISU engineering is very good and it should be ranked higher, imo.