Hi, my Senior son was accepted at Dickinson and Gettysburg with more merit at Gettysburg. He is not a drinker and is concerned about how fitting in at either school which we heard are very heavy on Greek life and drinking. Please share your experiences.
We know a handful of Dickinson alums who graduated within the past 5 years, only 1 was in a sorority. Our understanding of greek life at Dickinson is that it is there for those interested but can otherwise be completely irrelevant to a student’s life there.
At almost every college, there will be drinking and partying, greek life or not. The key is whether there are things to do on the weekends which don’t involve drinking that students actually want to do – are there concerts, performances, game nights, galas and parties that are not run by greek life organizations.
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Thank you this is so helpful!
We looked at Dickinson with my D a few years ago and we did not get the sense that it was heavily Greek.
I agree that I don’t think Greek life is a huge presence at Dickinson. My daughter was very anti-Greek life and wouldn’t have considered Dickinson seriously if Greek life was a big issue.
I can’t help with Gettysburg, sorry. Try looking at student reviews on Niche and Unigo. Also look at Fiske guide.
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Social life at Gettysburg College is primarily centered on Greek life.
What did you/son like about these schools? Would he still like these things if everyone else at the school was at a frat party? (and really, they won’t all be at parties all the time) Did he like the dorms, or the courses offered, or the student newspaper, or student government? Did he like the labs or the library or the rec center, the study abroad program or the internship opportunities? Those things would still be the same with or without Greeks.
Hello! I’m a first year at Dickinson. I just came back from being on campus. While I was there, there was definitely drinking on the weekends, however, a fair amount of the friends that I made there did not participate at all and they were not “shunned” for doing so. All of the friends that I made there were very understanding that some do not want to/do not need to drink in order to have fun. I will say that it is also dependent on the group that you hang around as well. As for Greek life, I cannot speak much to that, to me, it seemed that there was not a big frat presence at all. As for sororities, I met a few girls who were rushing, however, it was only a handful.
Just a disclaimer, I was only on campus for half of the semester, and it was only Freshman and Sophomores that were on campus. Because of this, I did not really see the whole Dickinson social life.
Also just a note, I did not drink AT ALL in high school. At Dickinson, I began to socially drink, responsibly of course.
I will say that there are some students that drink during the week days, however, I never participated in this because I have classes at 8:30 and 9:00 AM every morning.
I also looked at Gettysburg in the process, they also gave me around 50k more in merit. Although I don’t know much about Gettysburg, I believe that the greek life there is more prevalent than at Dickinson. As for drinking, it is most likely similar, for some reason I just have an itch that they potentially drink more at Gettysburg.
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