<p>Northwestern's social life is abysmal. It's awful times 10. First, it's overrun by greeks, second the quarter system kills students, and third evanston is a dry town that the temperance movement loved. No way.</p>
<p>Northwestern's social life isn't "abysmal". I agree that it isn't great, but Northwestern has a nice atmopshere.</p>
<p>Fair enough. Having spent time there, it was my expierence, and many friends voice that opinion to me.</p>
<p>Obviously one student might hate their time at say, UChicago, while another finds it perfect. To each his (or her) own, obviously.</p>
<p>I know what you mean transfer. I have only known 6 students who attended Northwestern. All of them had an ok time, but none of them loved it. By and large, NWU is entirely too populated with pre-professional, type-A, overly driven students to be a fun and laid back place. And Evanston, as nice a residential community as it is, is not a fun place to be a college student. Evanston isn't as fun as Madison or Ann Arbor to be sure. But if you take the L for 30 minutes, you find yourself in downtown Chi-town, my favorite city in North America. Like I said, Northwestern is not a great place to go to college if one's focus is quality of life, but it is not abysmal either.</p>
<p>The social life is really what you make of it. Granted, there are too many Greek-oriented parties at the school, its still a fun place to be. The only thing that really is true is that Evanston sucks- its a terrible place for a school like NU to be. The social life at NU is pretty much the same as places like Penn and Columbia.</p>
<p>Hands down, Michigan.</p>
<p>Michigan has sub-par social life. I've been to High School parties better than the one's i've went to at U-M.</p>
<p>Wisconsin is the ultimate Party-Academic combination school. Now those are some actual parties.</p>
<p>I think a lot of it comes down to what do you want in a social life? Do you want to drink a lot in college and hang out at frat parties? Perhaps your one of those people who consider a good social life heading downtown and hanging out with friends. I myself am in the middle of it, and find a big party school, Wisconsin, as mentioned above isn't exactly my style. Nor do I consider a small LAC in the middle of nowhere to be a good social scene. It depends what exactly your want in a social scene.</p>
<p>*A2Wolves6, I'm suprised you haven't mentioned Indiana lol.</p>
<p>I don't think Indiana is particularly known for their academics, lol. Although they are in the top 40 in peer assessment, and top 75 overall according to US News.</p>
<p>I really thought you should have got in there. If you got into UN-Lincoln and UIowa, then IU should have admitted you. Are you going to transfer to IU?</p>
<p>Several posters on the first three pages did something I don't understand---they talk about Michigan's hugeness in a way that compares it oddly. One poster lumped it with Penn State (which has 10,000 more undergrads) and another implied Berkeley was fine on size while Michigan is too large (yett Berkeley has just about the same number).</p>
<p>Michigan is a big public school, and it certainly has huge enrollment when compared to places like UVa, but it is not the behemoth some seem to think it is.</p>
<p>Based on the discussion so far, the large state universities appear to have an advantage in the area of social life. Probably this is due to the great variety of social outlets that exist on these campuses. Yet the sheer size of most of the top 25-ranked state universities (all but Virginia are 23,000+) limits their appeal to many students looking for a more intimate college setting that still has all of the desired characteristics. </p>
<p>Using a screen of schools that have been mentioned on this thread, a Top 20 academic ranking and a Division I athletic program, I have developed the following list of ten schools. How would you rank each of these schools in the respective categories of academics, social life, strong athletics (including club and intramural programs), and physical characteristics (campus beauty and size, location, weather, etc.):</p>
<p>Colgate
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson College
Duke
Northwestern
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Vanderbilt</p>
<p>If you want a great mix of academics, social life, and atheletics, then The University of Tennessee is a great option to check into. :)</p>
<p>While Tennessee undoubtedly has some strong academic offerings, is a fun school and has a terrific athletic program, it is much larger than the schools listed above and, for other reasons as well, is probably not a good comp for this list.</p>
<p>UT-Austin!!!</p>
<p>dajada, I would say that's a very good top 10 list for an overall college experience on a variety of attributes and can't think of a school to add or drop from it. The four that I applied to of your top 10 (Colgate, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton) are probably my favorite four campuses and a guy that's seen 324 of them pits the four in the top 10. I definitely like the Rice, Northwestern, Duke and Stanford campuses too. <a href="http://www.colgate.edu/DesktopDefault1.aspx?tabid=730&pgID=6013&nwID=4077%5B/url%5D">http://www.colgate.edu/DesktopDefault1.aspx?tabid=730&pgID=6013&nwID=4077</a>. </p>
<p>From that list, Stanford is going to be most into big-time sports, although Duke certainly has basketball (and did have lacrosse). Even, Colgate, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton have big-time hockey and lacrosse. Socially, all are very good, but would say that Cornell, Rice and Northwestern, at least, have the reputation of not quite being up there with the other seven (although I don't know that much about Davidson). Academically, I would put Stanford and Princeton at the top of a tier I, with Dartmouth and Duke at the bottom of tier I, Rice, Cornell, Northwestern at the top of tier II and Colgate, Davidson, Vanderbilt in the middle of tier II, but basically you can anything from any of them. </p>
<p>I don't think I've seen anyone come up with such a concise, well-rounded list and it is a welcome change from the usual prestige mongers on these sites. Other schools that I would consider possibly being in the spirit of this list, but that might not be large enough, small enough, fun enough, athletic enough or academically strong enough would be: Brown, Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Hamilton, Bucknell, Colby, Washington & Lee, UVA.</p>
<p>i think that the combination of:elite academics, elite sports programs/school spirit, nice weather, prestige (which is my least favorite criteria but i know most of you are obssessed with it), grad school placement, pretty campus, and overall student happiness pulls two schools to the top:
STANFORD, and (as much as it pains me to say it bc i hate the bball team), DUKE.
no other school in the country has the strength of all 7 criteria</p>
<p>UMich! UVA! UNC! Stanford and Duke are elite privates, but the top publics also do well with the criteria (UMich's nice weather and pretty campus under debate)</p>
<p>Wow - I know some Davidson College students. Great school for academics - they work VERY hard on their studies with less time for socializing than most (that's what they report anyway). Sports programs are not high profile.<br>
Also, for academics and social life, the honors colleges/programs in the big 10 (and other large schools) present an attractive option (great sports and social life plus smaller classes and more attention). And usually scholarship $ too!</p>
<p>I visited all these colleges except Davidson.</p>
<p>Academics: Cornell/Princeton/Stanford
Athletics: Duke/Northwestern/Stanford/Vanderbilt
Campus: Colgate/Cornell/Princeton
Social Life: Dartmouth/Duke/Vanderbilt</p>
<p>What are the above?</p>