<p>I'm interested in LAC's for the most part but I'm worried about how centered the social scenes are on drinking? are there any schools with a less-pronounced drinking scene? for every college i hear that the social scene stinks for non-drinkers. I don't mind laying low/studying on friday/saturday nights, I just want to make sure i'll be able to make friends wherever I end up.</p>
<p>so far i LOVE bowdoin, hamilton, bates, colgate ect. any input?</p>
<p>I’d look at LACs closer to cities with more varied social lives. Swat, Sarah Lawrence, the women’s colleges if you’re female.</p>
<p>If you want to avoid colleges with lots of drinking, you pretty much only have religious colleges to pick from.</p>
<p>That said, I think it’s an exaggeration to say the social life stinks for non-drinkers at LACs. You can still party without drinking, and there are plenty of chances to make friends in other settings.</p>
<p>Look for LACs with a strong music and dance scene. Despite the strong correlation between the two, you can certainly dance or jump up and down at a rock concert w/o doing drugs or getting drunk (in fact, working up a sweat sort of defeats the purpose of getting high). Also, look for LACs that encourage independent living arrangements with small clusters of people and lots of access to kitchens. The more entertaining you do under your own auspices, the more you can call the shots.</p>
<p>I went to Rhodes. I didn’t drink till I was 21. I was in a fraternity. Heck, I was president of IFC. I had a blast.</p>
<p>Not to say that a lot of other people didn’t drink, but I was able to have a good time without it and not feel any pressure.</p>
<p>thanks everyone! I sure hope it’s an exaggeration. this is making me feel better though.</p>
<p>Also, lots of places of substance free housing, which is a good place to find others who socialize without alcohol. At Grinnell, S lived in sub-free for his entire time there and met lots of people for whom drinking wasn’t a big part of their social lives. Of course, living in sub-free housing doesn’t mean no one drinks - generally it means that if people do drink, they do it elsewhere, and when they get back to the dorm, they are quieter and more respectful of their non-drinking dorm-mates.</p>
<p>^ I agree with this. Both DDs were in sub free dorms. </p>
<p>Is this a concern for LACs and not public Us? If this is truly a concern you can look up the stone-cold sober schools in Princeton’s site: [College</a> Rankings](<a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings.aspx]College”>Best Colleges 2023 | College Ranking List | The Princeton Review)</p>
<p>Harvard Public Health did a comprehensive study of alcohol consumption among college students a while back and found that the following factors were linked to higher drinking rates at colleges:
[ul][<em>]Small size/enrollment
[</em>]Strong Greek presence
[<em>]High percentage of athletes
[</em>]High percentage of white students
[<em>]High percentage of business students
[</em>]High percentage of students under 24
[<em>]Low percentage of first generation students
[</em>]Low percentage of religiously active students
[li]Location in the Northeast (followed by Midwest)[/ul][/li]Many northeastern LACs have a lot of these risk factors, and it should be surprising to nobody that they consequently have high drinking rates. As with any type of college, LACs vary in their attitudes toward drinking. At some LACs, including at least one mentioned in this thread, students drink like fish. Others place a lot less emphasis on alcohol and/or partying. You can tell the difference on a Saturday morning when a college campus is either littered with solo cups or neat as a pin! The degree to which nondrinkers feel included or excluded from the social scene likewise varies immensely from one college to the next.</p>
<p>I think you need to figure out exactly what your attitude toward alcohol is. Not wanting to drink but being okay with being around drunk people is one thing; wanting to have a sizable contingent of nondrinkers is something altogether different. You’d have to plan your college lists accordingly.</p>
<p>The suggestions of looking into urban, artsy, and women’s colleges were very good ones, with the caveat that some students at artsy LACs - such as my sister’s - prefer marijuana and/or other drugs to alcohol. </p>
<p>For colleges you’re interested in, I recommend taking a good look at the available weekend activities. These are easily found on college websites, student newspapers, facebook, etc. How many are available on Friday and Saturday nights? Are they free? How well attended are they? What off-campus activities does the college sponsor? Take all attestations of drinking or a lack thereof with a HUGE heaping of salt unless you have done extensive research of your own. Just as no college will admit to being cutthroat, few colleges or students will admit high drinking rates - to the detriment of many prospective students. Conversely, many “party schools” have surprisingly little drinking and partying going on.</p>
<p>ss122, If you “LOVE bowdoin, hamilton, bates, colgate” you might not be a good fit with some of the colleges recommended to you here. My son (who was a light drinker, not a total non-drinker) graduated from a college very similar to the ones you list. He’s now in graduate school at another rural school with a party reputation. As far as I know, he’s still a light drinker.</p>
<p>My observation (and it’s from afar as I’m obviously not on campus at 2:00 a.m.) is that although some students drink far more than is good for them, the majority do not. No one will force you to drink. You will make friends who will share your interests. If you are involved in team sports you will have a ready made social group.</p>
<p>What you don’t want to do is go into college with the idea of “laying low/studying on friday/saturday nights.” The colleges that you appear to be attracted to are full of extroverted, energetic kids. They take their academics seriously, their sports seriously and their socializing seriously. </p>
<p>There will be plenty to do that doesn’t involved drinking to distraction. Rural colleges know that the perception that all activities are drink-centric is a negative for them and actively combat the image by providing lots of arts, sports, social venues, but it’s up to you to take advantage of them.</p>
<p>After you get your acceptances, do overnights at your top two choices. Then come back and tell us what you think.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for all the input. I don’t really mind being around drunk people, I just feel like it’ll get old pretty fast watching everyone else party haha. and I really am an extrovert, I’m lucky to have found a close group of friends in high school that also do not drink. I’m friendly with some pretty heavy partiers, I just choose not to hang out with them on weekends because obviously, they party.
I will definitely be joining a substance free dorm and doing overnights. Thanks again everyone :)</p>
<p>I went to an LAC that was a dry campus. There were plenty of students who didn’t drink. I drank some in college, but not much. And among my friends that did drink, we drank socially and in moderation. There was none of this stumbling home blackout drunk - usually we came back with a moderate buzz. The res halls were quiet at night, no parties within the halls. (Caveat: I did go to an urban women’s college, which had almost none of the pings on warblersrule’s list. The first-generation thing was a big deal, as I heard more than a few students say something like “My parents didn’t send me to college to get drunk and drop out.”).</p>
<p>You can find a group of non-drinkers at any school - there are always kids who don’t want to wake up with a hangover on Sunday morning.</p>