Studying in Des Moines: universities, housing and student life

Des Moines sits where the Raccoon River joins the Des Moines River, a flat, low capital city at the centre of Iowa and at the centre of the American insurance and financial-services industry. The gold-domed State Capitol looks west across the river toward a compact downtown of insurance headquarters, a sculpture park and a skywalk system that lets office workers cross the city centre in winter without stepping outside. It is not a large metropolis, and that shapes student life here more than any single institution does: the city is quiet, affordable by national standards, built around cars, and close enough that you can cross most of it in twenty minutes.

For students, the city resolves into a few recognisable zones. The Drake University neighbourhood, known locally as Dogtown, runs along University Avenue northwest of downtown. The East Village, just across the river from the Capitol, is the walkable district of old brick storefronts, coffee and resale shops. Residential neighbourhoods such as Beaverdale, with its distinctive brick bungalows, and the historic Sherman Hill sit between them. Grand View University anchors the city's east side, while Des Moines University — the medical school — has moved out to the suburb of West Des Moines.

That spread matters when you choose where to live and study, because the three universities serve very different populations: a traditional private undergraduate college, a small Danish-founded university, and a graduate-only health-sciences institution. This guide walks through each of them, then through housing, second-hand furnishing, work, libraries, transport and the honest limits of the place.

Drake, Grand View and DMU: three campuses, three different student lives

Drake University is the institution most people mean when they say they study in Des Moines. According to Drake's own about page, it was founded in 1881 and enrols roughly 3,000 undergraduate and 1,600 graduate students across seven academic divisions: the College of Arts and Sciences, the Zimpleman College of Business, the School of Education, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the School of Law, the first-year Bright College, and the Drake University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Drake's law school and its pharmacy and journalism programmes give the campus a professional, pre-career character; the campus itself is a self-contained district along University Avenue, which is why students tend to talk about "living on campus" or "living in Dogtown" rather than about Des Moines as a whole.

Des Moines University is not an undergraduate option. It is a graduate health-sciences institution, and by its own account on the DMU about page it is the largest medical school in Iowa, enrolling more than 1,500 students across three colleges — the College of Osteopathic Medicine, the College of Podiatric Medicine and Surgery, and the College of Health Sciences, with more than 880 students in the osteopathic programme alone. Note the location carefully: DMU now occupies a new campus at 8025 Grand Avenue in West Des Moines, a suburb several miles west of the city centre, and the university states the campus earned LEED Silver certification in 2024 with most of its power drawn from wind and solar. If you are heading to DMU, you are effectively studying in West Des Moines, not in the city's walkable core.

Grand View University is a small private university at 1200 Grandview Avenue on the city's east side, near the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Its history page records that it was founded in 1896 by members of the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the university describes itself on its Denmark page as the sole remaining Danish-founded university in the United States, still informed by that Danish Lutheran heritage. Its teams, the Vikings, compete in the NAIA rather than the NCAA — a reminder that this is a teaching-focused, close-knit campus rather than a research university. You can see the full set of student listings across the city on EduFabTech's Des Moines page.

Dogtown, the East Village and the east side: where students live

At Drake, your first two years are largely decided for you: the university's residence life pages state that full-time students are required to live in university housing for the first two years following high-school graduation. First-years live in the Quads — Carpenter, Crawford, Herriott and Stalnaker halls — and sophomores move to Goodwin-Kirk or Herriott. After the two-year requirement, options open up to the Campus Suites at Dogtown and Drake West Village, both within the Drake district, before most juniors and seniors drift into rented houses and apartments in the surrounding streets. For a dated cost anchor, Drake's 2026-27 tuition and fees page lists a double, triple or quad room at $3,683 per semester and a single at $5,434 per semester, with residential meal plans running from $3,075 to $3,293 per semester; undergraduate tuition for 2026-27 is listed at $26,494 per semester.

Off campus, the practical geography is simple. Dogtown and the blocks immediately around Drake hold the largest concentration of student rentals — older houses split into units, close enough to walk to class. The East Village and the downtown loft buildings attract graduate students and those who want a car-free life near work. Grand View students mostly stay on the east side near their campus, and DMU students cluster in West Des Moines near the suburban campus. Browse rooms and shared housing for the city on EduFabTech's rooms listings, or narrow to what is near Drake via listings around the Drake campus.

Rental scams near Drake and downtown — and how to avoid them

The rental scams that target Des Moines students follow a predictable pattern, and it is worth naming because it is specific. The bait is usually a house near Drake or a downtown loft advertised well below the going rate, posted by someone who claims to be "out of state" or "away for work" and therefore unable to show the unit in person. They ask you to secure the room by sending money before you have seen it or signed anything. Treat that as the warning sign it is. In Des Moines, a genuine landlord will let you walk the actual unit — or have someone meet you there — before any money changes hands, and a normal lease here involves a signed written agreement with a security deposit (commonly around one month's rent) plus the first month, paid by cheque, card or bank payment to a named party once the lease is in hand.

Never send a deposit by bank wire transfer, gift card or cryptocurrency to "hold" a room; no legitimate Des Moines landlord needs payment in those forms, and money sent that way cannot be recovered. If you are abroad and cannot visit, ask Drake's or Grand View's residence life office whether they keep an off-campus listing service, and ask a current student or the international office to view the place on your behalf. Verify that the person collecting rent is actually tied to the address.

Furnishing a room: salvage, Goodwill and the Saturday market

Des Moines rewards second-hand shoppers. The best-known destination is West End Architectural Salvage, a large multi-floor warehouse near downtown stocked with reclaimed furniture, fixtures and oddments — more useful for a desk or a lamp with character than for a mattress. Goodwill of Central Iowa runs a network of stores across the metro, including an outlet in Des Moines where goods are sold by weight rather than by item, which is where the cheapest finds turn up. The East Village and the area's antique shops are good for smaller household pieces.

For food and seasonal shopping, the Downtown Farmers' Market is a genuine Des Moines institution. The Greater Des Moines Partnership, which produces it, states that the 2026 market runs every Saturday from 2 May through 31 October, from 7 a.m. to noon (8 a.m. to noon in October), in downtown's Historic Court District. It is a once-a-week, warm-season affair, so plan a regular grocery routine around it rather than relying on it. For furniture, giveaways and resale closer to campus, EduFabTech keeps city listings for second-hand goods and used furniture.

Part-time work while you study

If you are an international student on an F-1 visa, the clearest rule to know is the on-campus hours cap. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security states on its Study in the States guidance that if you participate in on-campus employment, "you may not work more than 20 hours per week when school is in session." Off-campus work, and training such as CPT and OPT, carry separate conditions and approvals. This is not legal advice: before you accept any job, confirm your eligibility and the current rules with your university's designated school official (DSO) in the international student office, who is the person authorised to advise on your specific status.

Des Moines is an unusually strong city for this. Its downtown is a national centre for insurance and financial services, and the universities, hospitals and those employers together generate a steady supply of campus jobs, clerical work and internships — the kind of professional part-time experience that is harder to find in smaller college towns. Current openings in the city are collected on EduFabTech's Des Moines jobs page.

Libraries and quiet places to work

Drake's main academic library is Cowles Library on University Avenue. Its most useful feature for students is Midnight Hall, which the library describes on its site as a high-quality, 24-hour study space open to Drake students with an active ID card — a genuine around-the-clock room, not merely late hours during exam weeks. The rest of the library offers quiet carrels and group space during its regular term hours.

Off campus, the public option is excellent and open to everyone. The Des Moines Public Library's Central Library stands at 1000 Grand Avenue in the Western Gateway, a glass building designed by the British architect David Chipperfield and set in a park next to the Pappajohn Sculpture Garden. The library's locations and hours page lists in-person service from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. More desks, cafés and bookable spaces around the city are listed on EduFabTech's study spaces page.

Getting around on DART, and why many keep a car

Public transport in the metro is run by the Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority, known as DART, whose buses radiate from DART Central Station at 620 Cherry Street downtown. According to DART's fare page, a single local ride costs $1.75, a day pass $4 and a 31-day pass $48; the MyDART app plans trips, shows bus times and sells passes in one place. DART offers reduced fares to certain groups of riders, so if you are a university student, check directly with DART whether any pass or campus programme applies to you rather than assuming one does.

Be realistic about the limits. Des Moines is a car-shaped city: bus routes are built around commuting to downtown, frequencies thin out in the evenings and at weekends, and the suburban campus of Des Moines University in West Des Moines is not somewhere you want to reach by bus daily. Students living in Dogtown next to Drake can manage without a car; students spread across the east side or the western suburbs will find life much easier with one.

The trade-offs, and a first-fortnight checklist

What is good about Des Moines for students is real. It is affordable relative to the coasts, it is safe and manageable in scale, the downtown insurance and finance economy offers professional work and internships that punch above the city's size, and the compact campuses make it easy to settle in. What is hard is equally real. Winters are genuinely cold and snowy and summers are hot and humid; the metro is spread out and built for driving, so without a car your world can shrink to a single neighbourhood; and nightlife and big-city culture are modest compared with a major metropolis — Des Moines is a place you grow to appreciate rather than one that dazzles on arrival.

A short checklist for the first two weeks:

1. Confirm your housing in writing and, if you are a first- or second-year at Drake, sort your residence hall assignment through residence life before chasing off-campus options.
2. If you are an international student, meet your DSO at the international office and confirm your work eligibility before accepting any job.
3. Download the MyDART app, and work out whether you can live car-free from where you have chosen to live.
4. Get a library account at the Central Library downtown and locate your campus library's quiet and 24-hour spaces.
5. Plan a regular grocery routine, and save the Saturday Downtown Farmers' Market for the warm months rather than relying on it.
6. Furnish gradually from Goodwill, West End Architectural Salvage and the city's resale listings instead of buying new.
7. Never wire money, buy gift cards or send crypto to hold a room you have not seen.