<p>Hi, I'm new here and I was hoping someone could give me some insight into the social life at these colleges. I'm mainly wondering in regards to how cliquey the school is, the parties, the "hook-up" culture, and the location of the school itself.</p>
<p>Duke and Dartmouth are by far more clique-prone; more frat-driven; more preppy; and more isolated, although more beautiful. Duke for sports, but Columbia for NYC.</p>
<p>Dartmouth isn’t cliquey at all. It does have a big hook up culture though</p>
<p>Dartmouth isn’t cliquey at all. Very open student body where everyone is invited everywhere. I would say Duke and Columbia are more cliquey and less openly friendly as a campus, although there are wide excepetions at Duke.</p>
<p>I could tell from visiting Duke that social life focuses a bit more around Duke than anything else. It seemed like there was a lot of fraternity activity, but the rest of the student’s have to do something too, so there must be something else going on (or so I keep telling myself). Everyone there seems to be very welcoming and open (I walked into the mathematics department, and literally I was able to talk to an advisor; he walked me through what my scheduling would be like and what path/particular courses I would want to take. I did that for a class too, when a professor was having his students set up demos of some projects.</p>
<p>Dartmouth all I know is that my sister was very happy there. Her experience is 12 years removed from mine, and I didn’t apply.</p>
<p>Columbia, I’m in the science honors program for high school students. It seems that the university is also quite open and welcoming, and as far as I could tell, less about Columbia for Columbia’s sake than some other schools that shall remain nameless.</p>
<p>Didn’t spend more than a few minutes looking at Brown. My mom went to RISDe, took classes at Brown, and told me not to spend any time looking there. I didn’t really have the time to waste, so I didn’t do much looking.</p>
<p>Brown is characterized by the lack of a pervasive, monolithic culture. The only common thing here is more that there is a lack of barrier to entry at any and all activites you can manage to find interesting.</p>