This is why I think overnight visits are not all that helpful . It all seems to depend on how the host and visitor mesh and that’s just hit or miss. Visitors are getting the flavor of the school only from the eyes of the host.
There is far from just a single student culture. At every college I have spent a good amount of time at, there have been a good portion of students who are in to lots of partying and heavy drinking, as well as a good portion who do not regularly party or drink. It’s usually not difficult find other like minded students. For example, students who are in to drinking/partying might favor joining certain fraternities, while students who want to avoid seeing these activities might choose a substance free dorm, or a favor a dorm with a larger portion of upperclassmen.
For example, Davidson was mentioned. They offer substance free housing, as described at https://www.davidson.edu/student-life/residence-life/current-students/housing-lottery/substance-free-housing , but they also have had parties with enough drinking to send a dozen students to the hospital, as described at https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/davidson-college-students-hospitalized-for-being-overly-intoxicated/519788340 . Students who do not want to experience that side of Davidson do not need to attend the party.
I know a young man who went to Dartmouth, was an outstanding athlete and student, and had serious drinking problems in college. He’s fine now, but his parents were very concerned about him for a year or two while he was at Dartmouth.
@suzy100 right. So that’s my question. How can a student figure out the true vibe with just a short visit at accepted students’ days? What should they look for? What questions should they ask and who do they ask?
@lookingforward I was to believe that he would find a group at any of the schools on the list. I’m just not looking to make it harder than it has to be.
@homerdog, I just wanted to say that I totally understand your concern. Our family is not rigid religiously or socially, but habitual binge drinking/drugs is just plain unhealthy and risks too many permanent consequences.
From what I’ve gleaned from college students in our town, binge wastedness tends to taper off after freshman year, and it’s important to join groups that revolve around accomplishing stuff rather than partying (intramural sports, a cappella, outing club, language club, community service, etc.).
Ultimately, I have to have faith that there will be plenty of kids at those schools who, rather than get blackout drunk and be hungover every weekend, will choose to take full advantage of all the opportunities you mentioned.
Learning to drink responsibly - or, at least “socially” - used to be one of the rites of passage of eastern. small college life. But, those days have gone the way of the hall telephone and mail from home. The salutary effect on drunk driving fatalities over the years is undeniable, but, the main unintended consequence of raising the legal drinking age to 21 (from 18 in most NE states) is that it became a transgressive activity for three quarters of the campus, whether they drank or not. Kids who do, now have to get sloppy drunk, alone or with friends, in the usually false hope that their “bun” will last the length of a party. Finding people who don’t will be a somewhat aspirational enterprise, but not impossible by any means.
@homerdog , you seem to think that your kid is a “student athlete” and then there are the dumb jocks. My kid would have been considered both, and graduated #1 from her med school. Don’t put your kid into a box and then try to fit him into a school where everybody is the same. It doesn’t work that way.
@homerdog, I don’t think there is one answer here. When my older D visited the school she is now attending, she didn’t like it. But it was colored by the fact that she was car-sick when we got there. She literally threw up in the parking lot upon arrival. This was ND, and she’s not Catholic. But she was accepted into a summer program there that we only considered because it was all-expenses paid and she was accepted and she never looked back.
I guess my point is that each visit is a snapshot, and each visit can result in a different snapshot. You can never be sure, so I wouldn’t advocate striking a school because of a snapshot visit.
hi there! current freshman at grinnell here. i’d say the claim of campus being “split” into thirds is not entirely correct, only because some overlap was left out. i would say campus is “split” into fourths: those who smoke, those who drink, those who do both, and those who do neither. i have friends who fall in every category.
with that being said, yes, marijuana usage is prominent here as is alcohol usage, the former being more common than the latter because alcohol drinking is pretty much limited to the weekends (and wednesday parties, but no one really goes to those, at least no one i know except maybe one out of the many friends i’ve made since being here). hard drugs such as cocaine, mdma, ecstasy, etc. are extremely uncommon to the point where i don’t know if anyone on campus uses them. maybe that’s an understatement because i’m sure some whacky person here does, but i’ve neither seen nor heard of anyone doing so.
everyone is very respectful of each other’s decisions. conversations such as, “yooo, what are you doing tonight?” “i think i’m gonna stay home and watch a movie!” “ayyye, aight, i’ll probably swing by before i go out if that’s okay?” “yeah! that’s totally fine. i’ll be here all night if you need anything, lol.” “cool beans! i’ll see you in a few.” are suuuper common, at least between me and my friends.
should your child be accepted and choose to attend grinnell, s/he will find her/his people. if you have any other questions/concerns, feel free to pm me at any time. 
I think cross country runners tend to be s little nerdier and do less partying than some other types of athletes might. Just on average — certainly there are runners who do, and plenty of other types of athletes that don’t.
Dartmouth does have a particularly strong party reputation.
@CottonTales it took a long time for S19 to find his group in high school. He’s always been a strong student and sporty. He played USTA tennis very seriously in middle school but burned out and went back to soccer only to find the soccer freshman at our high school were part of the very fast crowd. He struggled socially and it was very hard to watch. It wasn’t until he found this XC group that he’s blossomed as a friend and a leader in this group. Not super interested in paying $75k a year for him to be surrounded by the work hard party hard kids. Not his thing. So, if he prefers a small school, he does need to look into the social scene if he intends to have a full experience of academics and social life.
Again (not sure how many times I have to say this), he gets there will be drinking. He’s not looking for some dry campus. Just not interested in a place where the weekend vibe is all about drinking early and often.
Impossible unless going to a religious school that prohibits it. A visit to Liberty or Ave Marie is going to be different than an overnight at Hamilton or Colby.
Part of the problem when judging a school by the overnight visit is that the host is trying to show the guest a good time in a very short time. I don’t think the hosts are always going to be doing what they normally do when hosting. They might normally sit around and talk to friends, but the guest wants a little more than that. So they go to a party when the host might normally be studying or working out or going to a movie with a date or just watching something on TV.
If my daughter had been a host on a Wednesday, the poor visitor would have been fed, they’d head to the library for a fun night of studying at athletic study tables, and at 9:30 gone back to the dorm to go to bed. For added fun, up at 5:30 for lifting. College life M-Th was pretty boring for her. If it was a Friday or Sat visit, more excitement but partying included. No smoking, no drugs. If the visit was on a football weekend, my daughter might have taken the visitor but she normally didn’t go to football games so honestly, the visitor would be getting a view of what students do when they are hosting, not what they do most of the time.
Some questions for your student to ask as many students as possible to try to get a sense of the culture:
What did you do last Saturday night?
If you hadn’t done that, what were some other possible choices?
What do you do to blow off steam?
What kind of influence do you think frats have on the social life of the school as a whole?
Jeez, this stereotyping is tiresome. @homerdog, In your post #16, you wonder if there are any students at Dartmouth that are “serious” and don’t overindulge every weekend. Really? You think that Dartmouth is just a booze infested campus? Students can, be “Serious” students and occasionally overindulge. You are for a rude awakening if you think your son is going to find a campus that is full of serious non drinking, perfect student athletes. May I suggest BYU or Liberty. smh
Maybe you need to ask on those college subforums. Get some student response, such as the post from @kalons.
@CottonTales hm not helpful. And I obviously know there’s no such campus or I wouldn’t be asking how he can determine a place where he can find his people. Pretty clear that all of the schools on his list have all different types, including the kind who can be serious students and overindulge. I went to Northwestern. I know they exist. He’s just not one of them. Not sure why you’re attacking. I think I’ve been clear in every post that I understand kids drink in college. Let’s move on. Thanks to all of you who have had great suggestions so far on how to best determine fit and thanks, too, for sharing your experiences.
To echo circuitrider, unfortunately the current culture on most campuses among many (not all!) kids is to drink early and often. It’s an awful front-loading of hard alcohol thing that is maybe the unexpected consequence of stricter rules on campuses (no keg parties, etc.). I think it may be magnified at a smaller school, but from what I hear, it happens everywhere. But as someone else mentioned, my son says he sees less of it as a sophomore as he did as a freshman. And yes, it certainly goes on at the colleges you mention (he knows kids at Bowdoin, Dartmouth, and Middlebury). I don’t know how they manage either–but these are super-smart young people at the peak of their physical ability, and they seem to be the work hard/play hard type. I think if your son is comfortable with his choices, and is confident, he will be ok and I’m sure he’ll find some likeminded peers anywhere.
For me the point of the overnight visit would be, firstly, to acquire information and, secondly, to act on it. Stated differently, I wouldn’t ignore the impressions formed during this visit.
As an antithetical proposition, if it can be convincingly argued that visits of this nature create nothing more informative than aleatory encounters, then skip them.
However, I’d argue for the former approach.
Sorry, I don’t mean to sound l like I am attacking. I guess my point is that there are going to be kids of all types at ALL schools, and I don’t think your obsessive worrying about this one issue should be a major concern as it is something that you can’t control. For your 75k a year, maybe worry more about the academic fit. The rest will work itself out.
@homerdog When we did campus visits, we limited them to daytime only, as we felt that the risk was too great that an incompatible random host that might cause our daughter to cross off a perfectly good school from her list. Instead, she did intensive day visits including visiting classes.
My kid does not party and while she knows that partying happens everywhere, she didn’t want to be at a place where it sets the tone. The most wholesome place we toured was probably St. Olaf, which officially is a “dry” campus but those in the know say it’s “damp.”
Incidentally, she ended up at Oberlin and has found plenty of friends (including athletes) that don’t indulge either. Substances are there if you want them but easy to avoid if you don’t.