Not a Current Student, so sorry for Bigfooting those who are.
I’m having a tough time figuring out whether your concern here is that your D is not really outgoing and you’re trying to make sure she ends up at a place where she can just retreat from or avoid a party scene without undue pressure, or that you yourself want to make sure she doesn’t end up in an environment you don’t want her.
In any case, if it helps her, a few thoughts: Notre Dame would not be characterized by most as a stereotypical “party” school. You won’t see students hanging out the windows at 500 person ragers on a Saturday night, and obviously there are no frat houses. Its admissions is at a level of selectivity that ensures there are a lot of serious students around and very few, if any, are there to spend 4 years just getting wasted.
It is, however, a very social school, and I’d characterize the median student there as more on the extroverted end of the spectrum than average. Community is stressed at ND more than any other place I’ve witnessed, and the student body in general takes tremendous pride in being a part of the community. The solitary scholar is a not a common bird there. So perhaps not surprisingly it’s also a place where there’s a decent amount of drinking. You can, in fact, witness a few kids swaying, puking in the bushes and otherwise acting like fools outside the football stadium at tailgates in South Bend, although again, it’s nowhere in the same league as what you may see in Columbus or Tucson or Oxford.
Since 80% of the student body lives on campus and the surrounding town is by no stretch a typical “college town” full of bars and live music venues, etc., an outsized portion of the social life centers around and occurs in the dorms. On an average Friday night, the average ND student is either in a dorm or at a sporting event (huge school spirit, and what else are you going to do on a Friday night in South Bend in February if there’s a basketball game and UNC’s in town?). The residential college system, while in no way “forced socialization,” does, in fact, foster socializing and hanging out with your neighbors. The residence halls host events, dances, parties, and fundraisers for charitable causes, and it’s the students who plan and execute all of those things. It’s a unique feature of ND that really isn’t replicated at many other schools, and a lot of kids are specifically attracted to it (including our D23 who’s hoping to be accepted). One need not participate, but it’s probably a little harder to do so anonymously there than at most places where, once you’re through freshman year, you can move off campus or find other less social living arrangements. It will be all around one and difficult to just avoid entirely.
You’re correct that, in a residential college environment where freshmen are living in the same building as 21 year olds, they can access alcohol pretty easily if wanted. That said, the barriers that may exist at other schools are pretty easily overcome, especially at schools with a Greek system. So it’s not all that different in that regard, although it’s probably harder to just completely avoid.
All that said, yes, of course a student can retreat to their own room and avoid those things, or partake in just a few here and there, or spend their nights at the library or trying to find someplace that screens foreign films off campus, or whatever floats their boat. And if they want to be social but not drink they’ll find their people. I don’t think that’s any different from any other school, although I’d venture to guess that’s a smaller proportion of students at ND than at many other places.