<p>This is kind of a delicate thing, because I don’t want to trade in stereotypes in any direction, but the phrase “BC and Villanova being catholic schools I only hoped there would be less alcohol” indicates that the OP’s view of mainstream collegiate culture is not nuanced and not very accurate.</p>
<p>OP, judging a college by the average volume of alcohol consumption per student is probably not a great idea. The colleges that are really alcohol-free are going to tend to be colleges where being a Hindu will be difficult at best. That won’t be a problem at the colleges you listed, because none of them is remotely close to being alcohol-free.</p>
<p>Start by thinking about what’s really important. Is it how much the kid in the next room is drinking? Probably not. If I were choosing for my kid, I would say I wanted her to be somewhere that made her feel comfortable but expanded her horizons, where she could get the education she wants (and more than she wants!), do the things she wants to do, and find friends and peers. None of those things is actually inconsistent with a “party school”. </p>
<p>Penn State, for example, is a huge party school, but it’s also a huge everything school. There are probably more non-drinkers (and more Hindus) at Penn State than at any five of the colleges you named combined. If Penn State is the right place academically, the fact that it’s relatively awash in alcohol doesn’t mean that it’s not a perfectly good place for a nondrinker. (I’m not pushing Penn State, by the way, just using it as an example.) It would be much easier to find a satisfying set of nondrinking friends at Penn State, and nondrinking things to do there, than it would be to find great engineering faculty and research opportunities at, say, Earlham (a “dry” Quaker LAC in Indiana that you ought to check out if you are attracted to LACs, although I suspect it’s a little wet around the edges).</p>
<p>What you really want is a place where people accept not drinking as a reasonable choice, and where social relationships don’t depend on drinking. A lot of the time, that DOES mean urban (or quasi-urban) colleges, because there is more stuff to do there. “What’s with all of these upstate colleges” is that you can’t necessarily go to the art museum, or to a concert, whenever you choose, and playing board games and watching TV doesn’t make people feel like they are having enough fun if they do it every night.</p>
<p>The college where my kids went, the University of Chicago, did a great job of that. There was plenty of drinking, but there was plenty of nondrinking, too, and as far as I can tell very few students thought that drinking or non drinking was a really important division in the world. I would guess that Rochester, which has modeled itself on Chicago in many ways, is fairly similar. Brown would be fine, but I don’t think there’s any big difference between Brown and any other of the Ivies besides Dartmouth (which you may want to avoid, although I know teetotalers who adored it). I don’t know why Johns Hopkins isn’t on your list. I would also think about the University of Toronto and McGill. Because the drinking age there is 19/18, kids get it out of their system faster, and it isn’t some illicit, transgressive thrill. Social life revolves around the great cities they are in, not getting hammered.</p>
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