Is this common at your school?

When I visited Chicago I mostly hung out with Indian guys (i am white). Maybe because we could appreciate each other's tech backgrounds?

Hmmm, yes, this can be an issue wherever you go. People who are not used to mixing with other nationalities/cultures do not know how to approach the situation so stay within their own communities.
Fortunately for me, it`s one area I have no problem with, London is multi-cultural, so working in London effectively means you work with lots of people from different countries. Team building events help you to mingle.
Working in multi-national companies alos help people to mix.

The individuals have to put the effort in. Sometimes its just a case of one person crossing the boundary, and then all boundaries are relaxed. The groups will always exist as comfort zones, but relaxing those boundaries are important. Particulalry when everyone graduates and starts working in multinational companies.

This definitely exists in every aspect of life. The best you can do is to try to overcome it.
My own version is to act "clueless" as if I don't realize I am not allowed in the group. If I accepted this way of living I would be an outsider to my wife and her family.
<political reference deleted here>
Anyhow, it really is up to us to kill this stuff. Lets do it with our generation.

This is definitely an important issue that pervades all demographics and ages. But we can stop it. Like others have said, all it takes is one person to make the effort and try to bring two "cliques" together.

Moving from Los Angeles, to a town of 1500 people in the Midwest, and being the only Asian throughout a majority of grade school, I always broke into different groups.

Will be doing the same in business school!

My experience is somehow different, although I sometimes see some others who react in that way. One of the great components in that respect of the 1st year at HBS is that you hang out A LOT with your section. Since every section is balanced in its composition, you are automatically hanging out with a multicultural crowd.

I have a few friends who tend to hang out mostly with whom they know, i.e., people from the same country or region. Some of them knew each other before school, some become closer through their partners who tend to hang together, etc. In my experience, though, this is not so much imposed as chosen by every individual. I have not experienced any situation in which someone would be unwelcome to a particular crowd if that person is willing to spend the time and effort that building a friendship or similar relationship demands. To clarify: if you sit by your phone expecting to get invites from every single group to every event while contributing nothing, little will happen. If, however, you make the effort to try and participate in some general activities and build rapport it is easy to get in the loop and participate in any events. For eg.: if you send an e-mail to a random group of people from your section inviting them to dinner, drinks, or an event it is likely that several will accept regardless of any other factor.

Furthermore there are activities which tend to diversify compositions such as:

- Sports clubs / activities: some, such as soccer, tend to resonate stronger with, for eg., internationals, but even so it is not particularly restricted to any subgroup. Section dodgeball, flag football, squash, cornhole, skiing are all enjoyed by diverse crowds.

- Professional interest clubs and conferences: from entrepreneurship to social enterprise through finance, all clubs are likely to be diverse and foster integration.

- Treks: I had the chance to organize and lead a trek and must say that people tended to hang with each other based on interests (the guys who liked to go out every night vs. the "I'll better go to sleep and enjoy tomorrow's activities" crowd) rather than international lines.

There are, of course, other activities who tend to cluster people along ethnic or geographic interests. For eg., while there are some non-Africans in the African business club, the majority of the members of such club are Africans.

Conclusion: in my experience, cliques do exist but will not constitute a barrier to interaction as long as you don't want them to be so.

L.

Really? How bad is it?

I noticed that at some schools more than others during visits. I was curious if it had something to do with the school's culture, or maybe just the individual students in a given class. I mean if there are 50 Indians, Chinese, or whatever demographic in a class their personalities can vary year by year.

Its just a reflection of society...
e.g. Where i work now, maybe 40% are Japanese, 20% are Indian, 15% European, 5% American, 10% China, 10% Rest of Asia and the world.

and people generally hang around with their cultures. Funnily enough, you usually find its the same people who mix around (the natural networkers), so the people who ocassionally hang around in different groups tend to be the same individuals, so you see them mixing with each sub-group.

Such is life.

Very interesting and somewhat true.

My class in Oxford is very diverse. Still the three groups mentioned by Monisha could be vividly sighted in class. Many times these groups intermingle and enjoy. But still it is there. And Quite a few times this get serious.

for example at many occassions we need to form teams. Definitely diverse teams could provide you rich experience. However for many people, due to their limited interaction outside their group, it becomes difficult to form such diverse group. In summer many of us do 'Summer Consulting Project (SCP)' where we need to form teams of four and work on consulting projects with corporates. Obviously most companies seek diversity in teams and considerable number of teams couldn't provide it. Quite a few people had negative impact of this grouping on their academics and SCP...