Iowa State University is located in the city of Ames , in central Iowa, in the United States.

  • Ames is about 30 miles (roughly 48 km) north of Des Moines, the capital of Iowa.
  • The main campus address is 1750 Beardshear Hall, Ames, IA 50011-2103.
  • It’s a classic college town built around the university, with a large, spread-out campus of over 1,800 acres.

If someone online says “I’m heading to Iowa State,” they almost always mean they’re going to Ames, Iowa, not just anywhere in the state.

TL;DR: Iowa State = big public university in Ames, central Iowa, just north of Des Moines.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.