<p>Look at schools that have substance free dorms or floors. Amherst is one.</p>
<p>Amherst also needs one. </p>
<p>It has one of the heavier drinking cultures of the New England elite colleges.</p>
<p>Do a search on "alcohol poisoning" or "stab wound" in their student newspaper.</p>
<p>Definately think about CMU if you do not want to get caught up in a party school.</p>
<p>I disagree with the "Stanford maybe being low" comment...Having a son who just graduated from there I have a fairly accurate picture. </p>
<p>I was initially appalled at the level of drinking at Stanford and how available the party scene was for underage freshman students. The alchohol policy was extremely open and there were many dorm sponsored parties (actually in the dorm and paid for with dorm funds) that had free flowing alcohol. They were also required to offer what they called EANABs (equally attractive non-alcoholic beverages) if there were dorm funds used. Although I understood some of the rational, I think that it ultimately created an environment which encouraged rather than discouraged underage drinking. A good source of information would be to do a search on the Stanford Daily website...seems to me there were many articles about the alcohol policy that was recently changed and tightened up. </p>
<p>I'm not trying to insinuate that Stanford is any worse than other colleges, just that, like most colleges (unfortunately) drinking is a VERY BIG part of the social scene.</p>
<p>Would like to add that Rice has parties that match Dak's description, as well.</p>
<p>The data show (as Interesteddad has pointed out) that the differences at schools that might otherwise be considered similar, even attracting the same students, can in fact be quite high. And he also hit the nail on the head when he suggested that the percentage of binge drinkers strongly colors a campus' entire culture, even if you are a total abstainer (and 20-30% at many campuses are.)</p>
<p>As a general rule the data show there is more drinking at: schools in the northeast and midwest; primarily residential schools; rural schools; schools with a higher percentage of Greek affiliation; schools where family incomes are well above average; coed schools; schools with a heavier emphasis on athletics; and schools without religious affiliations or traditions. Most of the data I have seen on individual schools (I do this for a living) confirm these associations, with occasional exceptions.</p>
<p>It is also true that at every campus,you can avoid the drinking culture. The real question is "why should you have to?", if there are other choices available.</p>
<p>
Gosh, mini, doesn't it seem a bit limiting to avoid "schools in the northeast and midwest; primarily residential schools; rural schools; schools with a higher percentage of Greek affiliation; schools where family incomes are well above average; coed schools [kind of hard if the OP is male]; schools with a heavier emphasis on athletics; and schools without religious affiliations or traditions"? </p>
<p>Enswim, you're obviously a very bright student, and while all of the schools on your list include some partying, virtually all of them offer sufficiently serious academics not to be "party schools" in my book. It seems a shame to restrict your options to schools whose main virtue may be a relative lack of drinking. If this is really important to you, however, you might want to read Tom Wolfe's "This is Charlotte Simmons" (widely believed to be based on Duke) before applying there.</p>
<p>I had a friend who hadnt partied in hs and only started to party at college(brown). She partied pretty heavily during the first semester but soon realized that the purpose of college was not to party but to get an education (of course, sociology students could write volumes on "parties") after she realized that her drinking went down dramatically and her grades went up. She is now a junior at brown and looking forward to med school :)</p>
<p>Lack of partying will definitely not be the deciding factor in my choice of colleges. I just want to get an idea of which schools on my list will have relatively more students with similar values. The bottom line is that I view college as a chance to learn and to grow, not to party. I want there to be a large group of other students who share this belief.</p>
<p>By all means, avoid Miami U. The drinking culture is so bad there that four students have died there this year. One was driving drunk on St. Patrick's Day (they get up at dawn and bar hop that day) and was hit by a train. The other three were killed in a house fire. Their blood levels were .2 and .3. There is a lot of soul searching going on now. I hope it results in badly needed changes.</p>
<p>'Gosh, mini, doesn't it seem a bit limiting to avoid "schools in the northeast and midwest; primarily residential schools; rural schools; schools with a higher percentage of Greek affiliation; schools where family incomes are well above average; coed schools [kind of hard if the OP is male]; schools with a heavier emphasis on athletics; and schools without religious affiliations or traditions"?</p>
<p>No, simply because, if it is an important issue, very few schools display all of these characteristics. And that's the whole point: when it comes to drinking cultures, schools are very DIFFERENT one from another. </p>
<p>Emswim has it correct that while partying or the lack thereof may not be the deciding factor in one's college choices, but can give an indication of those with relatively more students with similar values (partying or not.)</p>
<p>I tend to take books like PR and Fiske Guide with a grain of salt but still these books give you a glimpse into the culture at various schools especially those where Greek Life and/or substance abuse dominate (dominate being for me the main issue since many kids will drink) the social life. They also mention which colleges have stricter enforcement than others. I found that searching some school's student on line newspapers where kids were protesting dorm strictness can give you a sense of the school's approach.</p>
<p>I am curious if the people posting here that seem more experienced in this regard, and/or do this for a living as mentioned, find these books and on-line guides like PR to be accurate or not. Does location play into it because of a lack of alternatives for students who prefer other activities? Does the existance of substance free dorms suggest that the other dorms are party central? Your thoughts.</p>
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<p>find these books and on-line guides like PR to be accurate or not.</p>
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<p>I think it's the one thing they're most useful for. PR and Fiske do a good job of taking the cultural pulse of a campus, both in terms of the prominence of drinking/partying and in terms of other trends like "clove-smoking, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing" culture.</p>
<p>I definitely agree that IU and Miami ought to come off the list if the OP doesn't want to be around people binge drinking, puking etc. Purdue's pretty questionable, too. I think the others offer more to do that's unrelated drinking.</p>
<p>Obviously, I have never visited (or partied) at the overwhelming number of schools covered, and except for curiosity's sake (or an occasional conference), I don't request data for schools other than those in the state in which I work. Further, the data are semi-confidential except where the schools choose to release them. (If you request them, the school is legally obligated to provide them, but it will rarely be volunteered.) </p>
<p>Generally speaking, I have found both Fiske and PR to be accurate. PR sometimes over-accentuates characteristics to be found; Fiske tends toward a certain blandness. </p>
<p>As ID pointed out, the percentage of students who binge drink is a central characteristic of campus culture, even when the majority don't. The "feel" of a school where the percentage is, say 30% (Swarthmore) will be quite different from one where it is around 45% (Williams? Amherst), from one where it is over 50% (Univ. Colorado). There is, at least in theory, a "tipping point", where the cultural influence of drinking (or athletics or nerdiness or any other particular behavior) comes to outweigh the percentage of folks who actually participate.</p>
<p>I have no sympathy for administrators at selective colleges who say they can't address a drinking problem. It would be so simple for any college that has a low acceptance rate.</p>
<p>After residential frats, the second huge correlating factor with college binge drinking in college is students who binged drink in high school. Something like 75% of the college binge drinkers had already established the behavior in high school.</p>
<p>It would be so easy to design a section of the application to identify these students and simply not admit as many of them. For example, you list 30 or so postive characteristics of the school and ask students to check the ones that attracted them to the school. Bury some items in the list like "repuation for work hard/party hard" or "active social scene on weekends". I'm pretty sure that a bunch of PhD sociologists could come up with a few. Shoot, just ask how many times per month the applicant drinks. Even if only a few answered honestly, you'd start chipping away at the worst offenders.</p>
<p>Surely, there could be no qualms about asking for personal information or making such judgements. Heck, they judge you based on race or where your parents went to college. I would think that colleges have vested interest in knowing whether or not you are coming to school to party.</p>
<p>Instead, they try to address the problem with "Alice in Wonderland" rules like no alcohol at frat parties. It's amazing that a college president can even say that with a straight face.</p>
<p>To put it bluntly, at selective colleges, a high rate of binge drinking is a failure of the admissions department.</p>
<p>Could we get some documentation on the 45% binge drinking figure for Williams and Amherst? This figure keeps popping up but I've yet to see where it is substantiated other than hearsay and anecdotal information from second hand sources.</p>
<p>Contact Dean Roseman. </p>
<p>Between the special Board meeting on alcohol, the Task Force on Alcohol Abuse, now the permanent administraton alcohol committee, and the consultants, I have to believe that Williams has taken a look at its survey data from the most recent COFHE survey and from the Weschler Harvard studies.</p>
<p>It's actually a little surprising that they haven't published their data since the contention is that it would help if students knew the real numbers. The public statements obliquely confirm the numbers when campus officials say that the binge drinking rate at Williams is in keeping with national averages. </p>
<p>And, of course, the number of alcohol poisoning hospitalizations, alcohol arrests, and disciplinary actions suggests that the rate of drinking is pretty high.</p>
<p>interested dad - I really don't think your idea of asking questions as part of admissions would work to screen out binge drinkers. Everyone would quickly figure out the "right" answers that would help them get admitted, and would answer the questions in that way.</p>
<p>OK. So take the database of several hundred alcohol admissions to the health center or hospital from the last three years and see who the kids are. What high schools are they from? What ECs do they participate in? What race are they? Stop admitting those profiles.</p>
<p>The binge drinkers on campus were mostly binge drinkers in high school. If you get a half dozen in a row from a high school who are hitting the bottle hard at your college, you have a pretty good idea there's a heavy drinking scene at that high school. So, use that information in admissions. It's not like there's a shortage of applicants from elsewhere.</p>
<p>Sorry, interested dad, but I would hate it if my son or daughter were judged by the behavior a bunch of jerks (I was going to use a stronger word which would be censored) from our high school. Believe me, we have no shortage of them in either of their graduating classes. I am proud of my kids because they follow high standards of personal behavior and use good judgement IN SPITE of the behavior of many of their classmates. And I'm sure the same is true of most of the kids of the other parents on this CC board.</p>