Could be due to being more likely to have the +drinking characteristics, such as:
Smaller size means higher percentage of athletes. It may also mean that if fraternities and sororities exist as a viable ongoing system, they are more likely to have a higher percentage of students as members.
Northeast region.
Isolated location ("where there is nothing to do but drink").
Residential (as opposed to commuter) college.
Higher white, lower black and Asian enrollment.
However, each college, whether LAC or RU, can have its own combination of characteristics, and some may have significantly higher or lower drinking than their characteristics may suggest. For example, Penn State (main campus) is an RU with a notoriously alcohol-based social scene.
@user4321 I think a lot of kids are hoping to not be in the library on Friday and Saturday night, but do hope to be at movies or campus events, playing board games or cards, baking cookies, playing sports, hanging out with friends talking, etc â but not while drinking and not with a bunch of drunk people around them. The âlibrary testâ doesnât really get at that.
One way to see whatâs going on on campus in the evenings and weekends is to look at Snapchat - if you or your child has it - you can zoom in on the location of the college and see what people are posting publicly. Same with Instagram - not everyoneâs Instas are public but those who are will give you an idea of what they are posting about.
How about inquiring as to how many alcohol âtransportsâ occur each year? Isnât that somewhere in the Clery reports? Iâm also a fan of LACâs, having a senior at Pomona.
My D2 did hang at the library while her sister was revving up her party engines. D1 once told me how most of her friends were partying on Fri/Sat eves, but come Sunday, after brunch, all were back at work, in their rooms, common areas, library and labs.
OP has been clear, I think, that it took his son some time to warm up socially, in hs. Heâs looking for a compatible college atmosphere, where he doesnât feel like odd man out, when so much emphasis is on getting sloshed. I can imagine the concern itâs harder to find your tribe at some colleges.
It seems like when schools are in a rural setting you might find more kids drinking for lack of things to do. Then again they drink at urban schools, but at least there are museums, concerts and other options. If your son loves rural schools he should look into whether they have religious groups and/or substance free housing. I am sure that at all of the schools on your list he will find kids who donât drink, but there will be lots who do. He just might have to work a little harder to find kids like himself.
@citymama9 we arenât religious. Religious groups would really not be a fit at all. But I agree with having a campus with stuff going on and some schools are better at that than others.
i know many serious soccer plays who surprisingly smoke a lot of pot. Weâre talking recruited athletes too. I donât know how they have the lung capacity to play
Most rural schools work hard to schedule non-drinking events for students. I think one difference may be where students drink. Thereâs likely to be more on-campus drinking at rural and suburban schools because the arenât many bars in the vicinity, unlike at more urban schools. I donât know a lot of college kids anywhere who are visiting museums on a Friday night.
Honestly itâs too late to add schools. We are considering adding Tufts. I didnât give the whole list in my opening post. Heâs got 14 schools. We just found out that a boy he really likes at school is applying ED to one of the schools on S19âs list and heâs very much like S19 so that was sort of comforting. We are not considering big universities. That ship has sailed.
A common misperception is that LACs offer more small classes than elite National Universities and state school honors colleges. This is not accurate with respect to Columbia, Northwestern, Chicago, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, & Johns Hopkins. Additionally, large state university honors colleges offer great merit scholarships & small classes with superior advising, research opportunities, internships & job placements.
Among LACs only Claremont McKenna College offers more small classes as a percentage of all classes offered than the above listed National Universities, but it also has a drinking centric campus culture. Swarthmore, Wash & Lee, Davidson, Williams & Wesleyan also offer a similar percentage of small classes as do the above listed National Universities.
One might be surprised, for example, at the sophistication & quality of student found in the University of Georgia Honors College. Actually exceeds several Ivies on the basis of numbers/stats only.
@homerdog, could your son be my daughterâs prom date?? Haha. They sound a lot alike.
Maybe we need to start a college for âformer high school XC runnersâ!
My kid is a XC runner as well. She and her team are not drinkers. At our HS, the XC kids are high performing, high achieving kids. Top of their class, highest GPA of all the sports teams.
Not that there arenât great kids, smart kids, or non-party kids on other teams, but just seems that there is something about XC kids.
One of S1âs HS XC teammates ran XC at Grinnell, graduated two years ago. Last time I saw him he loved his time there. His personality was pretty much in line with what your son would be looking for, social but smart and a serious student, not really into the party culture. XC tends to attract that type.
One of S2âs friends is similar and is a sophomore at Carleton, an athlete but not a runner. Again, similar personality and he really loves his school.
The ones on his list (still?) from other discussions I would worry about more would be Richmond and Colgate. No info on the others.
This should be pretty obvious, but if youâre looking at schools like these with less than 2000 students, a party atmosphere that you want to avoid really can affect your college life. Assuming 3/4 of the students are into drinking and partying, that leaves just 500 students who arenât. If you expect your freshman student to mostly be getting to know other freshman, youâre down to 125. Whether those assumptions are accurate or entirely relevant isnât really the point. But at a school with 10 times as many students, youâre looking at a much larger pool of candidates for oneâs tribe. That doesnât necessarily make them easier to find, as weâve seen from many posts here from lonely students. But sometimes simple math is telling.
