I thought I was pretty blasé about campus partying but between that and the U South Carolina quote I am 
That seems like a LOT.
@PetraMC I wonder if the College had anything to say about that! I will say that we have kids at our school who probably drink and smoke that much and still manage to do ok at school. Seems bordering on alcoholism if you ask me.
Wish I could like many times over @gardenstategal’s post. Thank you for posting that, very helpful to anyone approaching these questions.
@homerdog Yeah but that’s what, only 35% of students who either don’t drink or drink a reasonable amount? Yeesh that’s a lot of binge drinking by most students on a typical night out. Alcoholism, indeed.
I think that you probably should not place too much emphasis on the overnight experience. Your son will find his “people” on any campus. I don’t think you can judge a campus culture on the experience with one or even several interactions during an overnight; as others have indicated an overnight can be unintentionally skewed by the host.
Also, if he has yet to be accepted, perhaps you are right you should not put the cart before the horse; wait to see where the acceptance chips fall and then worry about the ultimate decision?
Is he definitely going to be offered a spot on the XC/track teams? If yes, then you might best be served by overnights with actual team members. If he will be a walk on or have to try out once he is on campus, again you could be putting the cart before the horse you don’t know for certain that he will have a place on the XC team. Experience has shown me that some really spectacular athletes, who have assumed a place on a team, are sadly disappointed when things don’t pan out, not to mention a surprising number of athletes (recruited and collegiate club level) who give up their sport after a season at the collegiate level because they are growing into a different person, they don’t have time or just plan don’t enjoy their sport anymore. You might be surprised at the direction extra curriculars take your son in college, he could find a whole new passion and open himself up to a whole different set of “people”.
Step back and take a breath, the college decision process can be overwhelming, No collegiate decision is irreversible.
Agreed on @gardenstategal ‘s post. Super thankful for all of the time and thought that went into it. 
@labegg his overnight was at a school where he was told he could run. We met with the coach. It’s not a super competitive program and he would be part of the team if he would like. He has a few schools that said he would be a valued member of the team if he gets in. No support as far as we can tell which is fine. But it does seem clear that they would let him run. In XC, I think you can run as many kids as you want at most races so it’s not like most other sports. Then, there are a few schools where we know he isn’t fast enough and has no plans to try to walk on.
My school is fairly party heavy, but I found some friends who do party but respect my non-party personality.
Then again, this school is like 34k+ undergraduate population. I don’t know much about smaller schools.
While asking these questions, I would also keep in mind that your son is a young senior in high school, and that the things thinks he wants and doesn’t want now in a college, may very well be totally different in 2 1/2 years when he is a college junior. Tremendous changes happen in the years between high school and graduating college.
I have also heard that there is always a percentage of kids in substance free housing that are there not because they desire it, but because they were already heavily partying in high school, and the parents mandated sub free hoping it will stop that behavior. Not all kids are there by their own choice, and not all are substance free.
“Its all about the friend group I think.”
^This.
It’s all about finding your tribe. My D has become part of an arts organization in which its members are part of a theatre troupe. Once you are in, you’re in for all four years, so it’s a bit like a large, extended family. In addition to putting on three theatrical productions a year (one each quarter), there are myriad social events that include alcohol. As @NEPatsGirl described in her post, they have fun and take care of one other when the inevitable and occasional over-indulgence occurs.
I think that D got a fairly good sense of about the degree of alcohol consumption on campuses during her overnight visits. She also took a good, hard look at what types of activities and events (social, cultural, academic, political) are available on both weekdays and weekends. She made a negative comment about one school that didn’t have too much going on on campus during a Tuesday - Thursday visit. There were lots of Thursday/Friday/Saturday night parties and lots of alcohol, but not much in the way of talks, film screenings, or other events on campus on other nights.
Her school’s alcohol policy is that the school prohibits “high-volume distilled liquor containers … in undergraduate housing. It also prohibits hard alcohol at all categories of on-campus parties…Straight shots of hard alcohol are never allowed at any party. Beer and wine are the only alcoholic beverages that can be present at all on-campus undergraduate student parties.”
Students can drink beer and wine in common areas or in their rooms; they are supposed to leave their doors open when consuming alcohol.
Individual school’s alcohol policies are probably easily ascertained by calling the Provost or Dean’s offices or by doing a google search (not that there is a lot of correlation between schools’ policies and what goes on where the rubber meets the road).
A couple of posters suggested looking at how many kids were taken to the hospital for alcohol/drug related issues. I’m not sure how it works at various schools, but my D said that at her school the kids are encouraged to call an ambulance for a friend if they have any doubt at all for their friends ‘ health. And that there are no negative repercussions for the kids who needed help. My D said she thinks that kids are very quick to call, and that the rates at her school are probably falsely inflated because of this. Wonder whether this is the new standard at most schools, or if my D’s right that the kids at her school are unusually quick to call for help.
@homerdog , my son is a junior at a LAC in VA. I would characterize him as an “old soul” who would rather play board games on a Friday night than pound back beers. I was very concerned about him finding a group of friends with similar interests. I envisioned him sitting in his dorm room on the weekends alone. I was wrong. He quickly found a group of friends who also enjoy bowling and board games on the weekends. He’s very happy from a social standpoint. I do know that drinking and other “activities” exist on his campus, but he’s not part of that. IMO, I have a feeling that your son will find his group of friends and do fine at any of the colleges he has on his list. This is coming from a mom who was worried sick about her son’s social life at college. I wish the best for your son!
@Sue22 “I don’t know a lot of college kids anywhere who are visiting museums on a Friday night.” This made me LOL because my DS who attends American was out past midnight with his friends looking at the monuments lit up. He was shocked to find out they had to uber back to campus because the Metro was closed for the night. So you never know what kids will do - even visit museums on a Friday night!
@homerdog My DS has many friends on his floor (a floor that is for an academic program that is invite only)who “party”. He has always been a non-partier and does not find that they pressure him into partying. He has other friends with whom he plays board games, D&D, watches movies and goes to events. I also agree that XC students tend to be more health conscious and less prone to the stereotypes of athletes who party. MY DD’s two best friends are XC runners and they are not partiers at all. They are very health conscious and my DD has become much more healthy in her eating habits due to their influence.
I’m probably repeating a lot of what’s already here, but I’ll give it ago in case any of it is helpful to you @homerdog.
My D, who only applied to LACs, attended only two overnights during the college application process, and they definitely influenced her view of each school. At the first, her host was a freshman who had only been at the school for six weeks. Very friendly girl, but she talked way too much about alcohol and drugs and lived in a super-cramped dorm that reeked of weed. She also made it sound like students stuck around well past four years, something I knew wasn’t true because the school has a pretty high graduation rate. To this day I don’t understand why they would have a brand new freshman be in overnight host. The whole experience really turned my daughter off. The campus was very isolated, totally in the middle of nowhere, and even the tour guide said that while the college tries to schedule a lot of events as alternatives to drinking, The campus was very isolated, totaling in the middle of nowhere, and even the tour guides said that while the college tries to schedule a lot of events as alternatives to drinking, “the events are kind of boring and you can only go to so many cookie-decorating and crafting parties, you know?”
At the second school, her host was a sophomore who was super involved in a lot of things on campus. This host had a bunch of friends who treated my daughter with so much warmth and made her feel so welcome. She spent her time there joining them in various non-drinking activities. She came away feeling that there are plenty of happy, busy, social students on that campus who are not partiers.
She wound up at school #2. They are certainly parties and opportunities to drink if one chooses to, but choosing not to is not a problem at all and does not make a person feel marginalized. My daughter has been to some parties and has experimented a little bit with alcohol, but overall prefers to spend her time doing other things with friends. Non-alcohol related events on campus are pretty well attended. The campus is also in a safe urban area, with endless opportunities to go off campus for fun if you choose to.
While it’s certainly possible that her impression of school #1 was inaccurate, her impression of #2 was pretty spot-on. By the way, neither school has Greek life or is super sports-oriented. So I guess my point is that it’s harder to prove the absence of something then the presence of something. My daughter was fortunate that she met a whole bunch of students with interests other than partying who all told her how happy she was. Perhaps if she had a different post of the first school she would have felt the same way, and perhaps she could’ve been equally happy there. But she was comfortable enough with her impression of the second school to apply ED there and is now happy sophomore. If your son is able to find this on a visit perhaps he can trust it.
I think stalking the schools on social media sounds like a great idea, lol.
Best of luck to you and your son!
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As a STEM person who also went to a liberal arts college, I’ve found that reality and truth are rather complex, subtle and tentative things. Even in the domain of science, reality can appear contradictory; dead cats and live cats, particles and waves. Not even mathematics is immune from uncertainty: Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. When it comes to people, organizations and groups of people, well, sigh.
People and groups of people have many different facets. It’s not surprising, at least to me, that you could have LACs where:
on the one hand, and your son’s experience on the other. There’s no real inconsistency [1]. Your son’s hosts were simply talking about another aspect of campus life that admissions offices never mention. A different host on a different night might have brought up a different topic.
Looking back on my own college search, it’s amazing how different my impressions of my then-future alma mater were from my mother’s impressions. We were both looking at much of the same data: the same guide books, the same viewbooks, the same brochures. I never visited the campus. I never did an interview. Only one other person from my college prep school went to Carleton during the early 80s, and I never talked to him. OTOH, my parents knew co-workers and friends who went there or taught there. Nevertheless, it turned out my take on the school turned out to be quite accurate. Much more accurate than my mom, at least. This became quite clear to me after I enrolled, when my mom later saw the yearbooks and the school newspapers, etc. Occasionally, I’d also blurt out something that accidentally revealed some aspect of student life that she had no idea about, and then her jaw would drop to the ground.
Carleton and Grinnell are very similar in their campus culture or vibe. I don’t have statistics on drinking or drug use for any school other than Carleton (see footnote [2]), but I would expect that these two schools would be roughly in the same neighborhood in terms of alcohol and drug use. I suspect Bowdoin, Middlebury and Dartmouth might be very roughly comparable to each other, but I could be wrong. I don’t know very much about Hamilton or Davidson.
[1] Students, including bright students at well-regarded colleges, sometimes drink or do drugs. Also, see this post I wrote a while back and the references therein:
[2] http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20805845#Comment_20805845
I’ve gotten so many long, thoughtful replies to this thread. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to post.
@hokupaa I could very much see S19 at Carleton. I probably mentioned this up-thread but his alumni interview went three hours with a young alum who was so much like S19. He’s not going ED anywhere but I’m really hoping Carleton comes through for him and is an option come April.
@gardenstategal post #94 above. Because I know the school involved, I can assure posters that this was not a misrepresentation of the school’s culture. It has been well documented & publicized by the press & by the school’s own study. Meets all the criteria set out in @warblersrule and @ucbalumnus posts above detailing the findings of a Harvard research project.
“Is it possible that his hosts were boasting about their exploits and partying,”
The OP said the hosts did not drink but talked so much about the drinking and drug culture that it made a negative impression on the OP’s son. It’s possible the hosts made a bigger deal of it because they probably didn’t like that aspect of the college while another host may have just dismissed it as something that just happens.
@theloniusmonk These hosts were basically recounting their party from the night before so, unfortunately, they had some pretty obnoxious stories to tell. It was a Sunday night and I’m sure there weren’t many parties around. Maybe they were told to not bring kids to an event with alcohol even if there was one at a dorm or apartment. Again, they were freshman. New freshman only at school for six weeks or so. That was my first thought when S19 told me what happened. I recall the first few months of my freshman year and they were full of beer. But kids sometimes get over that initial excitement of being away and party more responsibly. I think the thing that really bummed me out is that this XC kid was given direction from the coach to host our prospective XC runner and this kid was not helpful, kind, or considerate in other ways during that 24 hours so that just adds to the drinking talk.
Don’t get fooled into thinking that because Carleton has a quirky intellectual vibe, that there is no drinking. There was a highly publicized incident last year where about a dozen kids were suspended for extreme alcohol consumption and hazing.
And what did we learn from the recent Supreme Court hearings? That even at a super smart school like Yale, there is a lot of beer and shenanigans! Lol.