BYU's social and cultural atmosphere is unique and often conflicted. The high rate of enrollment at the University by members of the LDS Church results in an amplification of LDS cultural norms which is often caricatured.

What makes BYU most unique is probably that most of its students abstain from all forms of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. The majority of the students likewise avoid premarital sex. This surely sets the university apart from other American universities. They avoid these things because of their LDS (Mormon) beliefs.

The confluence of students from predominantly Mormon communities from Utah and other parts of the Western United States with that of students from regions where Mormonism is much less prevalent results in intrareligious conflicts that are played out on a campus-wide stage.

One of the characteristics of BYU most often noted (and derided) is its reputation for emphasizing a "marriage culture". LDS Church members highly value marriage and family, as well as marriage within the faith. Consequently, the enormous population of LDS single adults in and around Provo makes it a mecca for singles in the church, irrespective of their affiliation with BYU. (Nearby Utah Valley State College, in Orem, is notorious within the LDS Church for attracting marginal students whose primary motivation for attending the school is to marry a BYU student.) BYU's "meat market" reputation is well known both within and without the BYU community, and is encouraged to some extent by the school's administrators and ecclesiastical leaders, who publicly highlight "successful" marriage statistics .

The perception of BYU as a glorified Mormon dating service, combined with the high esteem in which most Mormons hold stay-at-home mothers and breadwinner/homemaker marriages, has resulted in stereotype of the female BYU student more interested in marriage than education--in a popular phrase, "pursuing her M.R.S.". (M.R.S. aspirants traditionally major in Child Development and Family Relations, a program regarded by most within the LDS church as a vocational "mommy major".) Derogatory nicknames for the school include "B-Y-Woo", "Bring'em Young University" and "Breed'em Young University".

Most BYU students are acutely aware of the marriage stereotype, and many female students who attend the school go out of their way to defy it (earning the unflattering nickname of "Mormon nuns"), even as others contribute by dropping out before graduation because of marriage and subsequent pregnancy. The reality is slightly more nuanced, as statistical analysis bears out. 56.3% of the men and 42.4% of the women in BYU's class of 2004 were married (the average age at graduation being 24.3). Marriage statistics for the state of Utah as a whole indicate that BYU's marriage rate falls well within that of the state in general, with the median age at marriage in Utah being 23 for men, and 21 for women. It should be noted, however, that the percentage of married students at BYU is much higher than at most universities, and the median age of marriage in Utah is significantly lower than in the United States as a whole. In regards to marriage, BYU is thus best described as a reflection of the cultural practices of the Mormon population as a whole (and particularly that of the Mountain West, which is significantly more culturally conservative than Mormon populations elsewhere within the United States), rather than as an outlier.

BYU's large body of students who have served as missionaries for the LDS Church significantly shapes the institution's culture. Young men who are planning on serving missions ("pre-mish") are stereotypically uninterested in marriage, while those who are "returned missionaries" ("RMs") are stereotypically anxious to marry; women, in turn, frequently refuse to date non-RMs. Many returned missionaries who served in foreign countries retain a significant interest in the cultures in which they served (q.v.), leading to a proliferation of restaurants serving cuisines that are decidedly uncommon within the Mountain West.