<p>A large school will easily be able to be known as a party school when a large percentage of the student body is not into that scene. Even if well over half of the student body on those campuses indulge in watching athletics and/or partying that typically still leaves more than 10,000 students who do not! It would depend on how the dominant culture controls aspects of campus life.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t have such a list. There’s no school that is a good fit for everyone, and few schools that are terrible for everyone. I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to send my oldest to a big party school, and I would never send my middle child to an Ivy or other top tier school. Students and what they’re looking for are so different that I don’t see a need for that list - especially when it’s populated by schools that are large and diverse. </p>
<p>@HarvestMoon1 I have to agree with the others that there are many schools out there that are considered “party” schools but have superb academics. Just because a student body happens to have parties around campus, doesn’t mean that the students participate in it. I have a few friends that go to so called “party schools” who don’t drink or partake in those activities. They are all doing well.</p>
<p>It’s all about choices and keeping that balance. I feel like you are a good parent though, and I am fascinated by the idea of taking a gap year to “get it out of their system.” In college though, I feel like you just have to trust them to get their act together (otherwise have certain consequences) and having good reasons for the schools they apply to (even if it is a party school). I know I was raised with a distaste for such parties anyway, but any big school is likely to be listed as a “party school” whether correctly or not, just due to the size of its student body</p>
<p>I think the writer threw in some big name schools to draw interest to the article, which it did. </p>
<p>Nephew got a doctorate at LSU, and turned down other opportunities with full tuition scholarships. His dissertation is a published book.</p>
<p>DD worked very hard to get Presidential scholarship at UA - and I am very impressed with the academic programs and opportunities there. Not majoring in music, but respected music dept and fantastic Million Dollar Band which many kids drool to get into (DD has both concert and MDB scholarships too). </p>
<p>Being from WI, I am not sure any of the comments made for UA by this writer cannot be made for UW-M. UW-M also has a fun marching band and kids drooling to get into that opportunity.</p>
<p>When I visited University of South Alabama (USA) I kind of felt like the campus had a real laid back feel; also pretty close to the beach. I know some students do well there, but I also have a friend’s DD that lost her scholarship in first year w/o making adjustment to college work and too much partying.</p>
<p>As @shawnspencer said, choices and keeping the balance. My brother did take a gap year, and it was good for him - so he could work a year, and then applied himself to engineering (and he had been successful at school and professionally).</p>
<p>I agree with parents who pull a student from a school if they do not do well first semester - cannot have them do two bad semesters, lose their scholarship, whatever. Keep your kid from getting into a hole and falling deeper…</p>
<p>Big sports usually equals big parties. I think a distinction should be made between the size of parties and the frequency of parties. My definition of a “party school” is a school where students don’t take academics seriously and there’s a lot of partying throughout the week. I don’t consider the “work hard, play hard” schools to be party schools. Nor do I think that a school with huge football party weekends should
necessarily be labeled a party school. </p>
<p>Sooo to answer the OP’s original question, I wouldn’t necessarily put any restrictions with a few exceptions</p>
<p>If the school is too expensive, not accredited, or for profit (those schools are the work of the devil, soo many horror stories). Anyways, I think any list should be thoroughly thought through and the kid should have good reasons to backup the reasons he/she is applying to, then I’ll support them.</p>
<p>Otherwise, if the list is too large or contains some schools for some rather superficial reasons only (such as partying) then that would be when I’d ask them to take another look at those schools and trim the list</p>
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<p>That’s it, I’m sending D to Spelman!</p>
<p>re post #43- “UW-M” means Milwaukee, not Madison to anyone from the state. I’ll bet you meant UW, the flagship.</p>
<p>Yes Madison. However if I just put UW, people out of WI would maybe think a different state. In state would just have UW, and you are right they would say UW-M was UW - Milwaukee.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ua.edu”>www.ua.edu</a> is University of Alabama, but University of Arizona wants to claim UA… many times Alabama just uses the big crimson A or logo on top of a mean gray elephant face…Arizona State is asu.edu and University of Arizona is Arizona.edu…</p>
<p>Maybe I should say wisc.edu (for Madison) since UW.edu takes you to washington.edu…</p>
<p>@HarvestMoon1:</p>
<p>Lax bros tend to have a tight network after graduation. Maybe not so useful for academia, but useful in business (and VERY useful in some industries).
Good with the bad. </p>
<p>Agreed PurpleTitan I read that recent article as well. But my D is never going to be a “lax bro”. </p>
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You make some excellent points. Our state flagship is on that list. About every third kid from our area goes there and I’m glad neither of my Ss were interested in it. That said, I’ve known of maybe half a dozen or so who have gone there and gotten into serious trouble. One of S1’s friends confided in him that the party scene starts to get old about the second year or so and by the time they graduate, most don’t partake in it (much.) </p>
<p>The problem with the lax bros is their treatment of women. If they want to be ****s in their own insular world and it doesn’t affect anyone else, great. It’s the misogynistic tendencies of some of these guys that would make me think twice about sending my daughter to a school where that culture dominated.</p>
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<p>The problem with colleges known as party schools is that the campus culture and atmosphere may be such that if one doesn’t care for such an environment it could result in a seriously negative college experience for the student concerned. </p>
<p>Whether it’s noisy campus parties to the point one cannot study even at the library, drunk/loud students who make noise into 3-4 am in the morning with lax/no enforcement from the overwhelmed RA staff, involuntary sleep deprivation as a consequence of being in campus/dorms with such an atmosphere, peer pressure to drink heavily, anti-intellectual attitudes among the critical mass of party-minded students, rowdy violent actions which injure students and destroy property, and more…it’s not every aspiring college student’s cup of tea and that should be respected by parents…not belittled or minimized with the statement “Most colleges are party schools”. </p>
<p>That statement is also inaccurate as my LAC and colleges with similar cultures don’t have a party school campus culture and most college classmates would feel disgusted at the idea of having to attend such an institution. </p>
<p>Moreover, I’ve known several HS classmates and alums who transferred out because they got fed up with attending schools where there was a prevalence of drunk rowdy students who look forward to the weekend booze parties starting from Thursday. </p>
<p>Not a problem, Sally305, as long as you are willing to cross top lacrosse schools off your list - Duke, UVA, Hopkins, Syracuse, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, most of the co-ed LACs in New England, Denver, UNC, Maryland…the schools can control the teams if they want to, but some chose not to.</p>
<p>My daughter went to hockey camps at Denver U for a number of years, and the boys from the team ran the camps. They were the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet, and while they were big sports stars at a school where there weren’t all that many, I think they acted appropriately because that’s what the coach and school demanded. Did they drink beer and slap holes in the walls of their dorms? Probably, but you never heard of it as being an issue.</p>
<p>Neither of my kids ultimately wanted to attend college on the east coast, so eliminating all those schools hasn’t been a problem. And I completely agree that it’s the way the administration at any given school handles bad behavior. Obviously, many schools have lacrosse teams, and they do not substantially influence the campus culture at all of them. </p>
<p>@sally305,</p>
<p>Not being from that culture but having been around “lax bros”, I won’t definitively say that there are no misogynists in that crowd (though I haven’t ever seen anything overt) and I have seen women successfully leverage that type of school network in the workplace (and not by sleeping around, just through old-fashioned networking).</p>
<p>It means nothing - I went to UF when it was ranked the #1 party school in the country 3 years running, and while there is certainly no shortage of partying, look at how hard it is to get in and graduate from UF…in addition, being in a smaller town vs. a big city magnifies everything that happens at a college because there’s nothing else going on. Add in the warm weather and beaches close by, plus competing for national sports championships year after year, and it’s an easy tag line. FSU is a darn good school and getting harder every year to get in to. FAMU has had its share of issues, but is working on turning things around which I hope they do. </p>