How much of a party school is each of these?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>So, I'm a senior (wow, it's strange not to have to say "rising" or, as it's termed in my neck of the woods, "incoming"), and I've recently realized that I don't know that much about my schools that you couldn't glean from a flip-through of the U.S. News rankings or a quickie college visit. I don't want to go to a party school, since I'm pretty introverted and not into that scene. I'd rather hang out with the most obnoxious of the preppies, for example, if it comes to that.</p>

<p>These are a few of my schools that I'm wondering this about:
Brown
UPenn
Michigan (Ann Arbor)
U of I (Urbana-Champaign)
Miami of Ohio
Cornell
Dartmouth
Texas
Rice</p>

<p>^Just give any info you know about any of these schools. Thanks!</p>

2

<p>Can you actually afford UMich, UIUC and Texas (since you’ll be OOS for at least two of them)??</p>

<p>The larger schools with major sports programs like the ones I mentioned (and Miami) will have many party types. But you don’t have to hang with them. There are always some studious non-party types you can find.</p>

3

<p>Pretty much all of them. There are few non party schools if you mean places with no fun/drinking/dancing etc.</p>

4

<p>Well, there are schools where students have the occasional party, and schools where drugs and/or drinking are the main event on campus. I think it’s the latter category that most people refer to as “party schools.” It’s a continuum, though; you can find parties and partiers at any college, and you can avoid that scene at any college. It’s just a question of how dominant partying is. I’d put Brown, Michigan, and Rice toward the lower end of that continuum, i.e., less partying. Based on its recent Princeton Review ranking as one of the biggest party schools, I guess I’d put Illinois toward the higher end. Cornell, Penn, and Dartmouth have very large Greek scenes and you hear a lot of stories about wild partying. My daughters, who are not big partyers, have gone out of their way to avoid schools like that. Others find that scene attractive.</p>

<p>Often, but not always, there’s a fairly strong positive correlation between the relative size of the Greek presence and partying. Here are the percentages of men and women in fraternities/sororities at each of these schools:</p>

<p>Dartmouth: M 48, W 43
Penn:M 30, W 27
Cornell: M 27, W 22
Miami U (OH): M 24, W 24
Illinois: M 21, W 21
University of Michigan: M 15, W 20
Brown: M 12, W 4
Rice: M 0, W 0</p>

<p>Texas: No data</p>

5

<p>Brown
UPenn- its known as the social ivy for a reason
Michigan (Ann Arbor)- see ui and miami ohio
U of I (Urbana-Champaign)- its a state university of course there will be parties
Miami of Ohio- party school
Cornell
Dartmouth- a lot of parties
Texas- see ui and miami ohio
Rice</p>

6

<p>^ barrk123’s lumping of Michigan together with Miami U and Illinois is based on nothing but blind prejudice against public institutions. I have never, ever seen Michigan listed on anyone’s list of “top party schools.” Because it’s not. Not to say you can’t find a party, or have one, if you want, but it’s just not the same kind of all-out hard-drinking, hard-partying scene you find at some colleges, public and private.</p>

<p>Here, for example, is where Miami U turns up on Princeton Review’s rankings: #18 best campus food, #3 little race/class interaction, #13 lots of hard liquor, #6 lots of Greek life, #9 party schools, #14 financial aid not so great, #15 top entrepreneurial programs (undergraduate)</p>

<p>Here’s where Illinois is listed: #8 lots of beer, #14 lots of hard liquor, #3 lots of Greek life, #4 party schools, #2 professors get low marks, #17 least accessible professors, #9 best athletic facilities.</p>

<p>And here’s where Michigan is listed: #19 best college library, #16 best college newspaper, #10 college city gets high marks, #20 most politically active students, #9 students pack the stadiums.</p>

<p>Night and day; Miami scores on 3 of 4 Princeton Review party-related rankings, and Illinois on 4 of 4; Michigan on zero of 4. I think those Princeton Review rankings capture something about Michigan; the students are serious, studious, politically engaged, into all sorts of student organizations and extracurriculars, and yes they love their sports but a game is not just an excuse for a drunk the way it is on some campuses. Want a party? Sure, you can find one, but that’s not the center of campus social life. </p>

<p>Now obviously these Princeton Review rankings are highly subjective, and (no doubt intentionally) they mix it up a bit from year to year. Playboy also puts out an annual “top ten party schools” list, similarly subjective. Some schools make both lists with some regularity. Among Big Ten schools, Wisconsin, Penn State, and Iowa get the most listings, Illinois slightly less, but for all I know Illinois may be coming on strong. I have never once seen Michigan listed on either as a party school. Its students don’t think of it as a party school, the faculty doesn’t think of it as a party school, the townspeople don’t think of it as a party school, and at places like Wisconsin where they’re proud of their party school reputation, they’d scoff at any mention of Michigan as a party school. Because it’s just not.</p>

7

<p>I can’t imagine more partying than what my son experienced at Penn!</p>

8

<p>bclintonk’s detailed post is a perfect example of how the degree to which a school can be thought of as a “party school” is wholly dependent on perspective and the social circle that a given student is a part of during college. I know plenty of UMichigan grads who drank 4 nights a week consistently during college while I know some others that said they were in the library on Friday nights. Its not so easy to characterize a school as diverse as Michigan.</p>

<p>The same could be said for Cornell, Penn, and Brown of course. Dartmouth might actually deserve that moniker since there isn’t a lot of social opportunities for students to engage in outside of basement frat parties in isolated Hanover.</p>

<p>

Again, its all perspective-most UChicago alums I know always considered UMichigan to be a party school with wild tailgates on Football Saturdays and would scoff at the idea that Ann Arbor is in any way shape or form as intellectually engaging as their own community in Hyde Park is.</p>

9

<p>I think nearly all schools except bible schools have lots of parties. </p>

<p>The label, “party school” gets thrown around a lot as a “put down” as if there is a group of schools where kids party, and then this other group of schools where everyone sips Coke and Pepsi on the weekends. </p>

<p>When you get a group of 18-23 year olds together on a residential campus, there will be parties…even at serious-sounding schools like MIT.</p>

<p>Also, as Erin’s Dad points out, those OOS publics wil be very expensive. What are your parents saying about how much they’ll pay?</p>

10

<p>Just because a school is a party school doesn’t mean it can’t also be a very good academic school. There’s such a thing as balance. At Penn State, there have always been a lot of parties … and also a lot of really good academic programs. </p>

<p>It’s up to you how you balance the two. I had a blast at Penn State. And, oh yeah, I also got a good education.</p>

11

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<p>My, goodness, isn’t that a reflection of the grim bleakness of their own lives? This is really tame stuff in Ann Arbor. They don’t set their front porches on fire after games like they do in East Lansing, or turn over and burn cars with Michigan plates like they do in Columbus. They don’t rank among the nation’s highest per capita alcohol-consuming localities, like Austin, TX, or Madison, WI, or Lincoln, NE, or turn a football weekend into a 3-day drunk like at Penn State or many SEC schools. But I guess if goldenboy is to be believed, to some Chicago alums having a brat and a beer before a football game is pretty much indistinguishable from these aforementioned activities; it’s all “wild partying.”</p>

<p>That’s not consistent, however, with what our Chicago student tour guide told us about the “live hard, play hard” approach of today’s students at U of C. Made it sound like a pretty wild party school, which he took to be a good thing but which caught me by surprise because I had always bought into the University of Chicago “where fun comes to die” mythology. As I said, you can find parties and parties just about anywhere. The question is the degree to which that sort of thing dominates campus social life, and at Michigan it’s not even close. Sports, yes; wild partying, no.</p>

12

<p>“Again, its all perspective-most UChicago alums I know always considered UMichigan to be a party school with wild tailgates on Football Saturdays and would scoff at the idea that Ann Arbor is in any way shape or form as intellectually engaging as their own community in Hyde Park is.”</p>

<p>I could only imagine what these same people would think of Duke during basketball season.</p>

13

<p>rjk – It’s interesting that you should mention that. In NC, Duke has the reputation of being a huge party school and has received a lot of bad press in the past few years for some of the more notorious campus parties (“progressive” parties, Tailgate, lacrosse team parties).</p>

14

<p>So then I guess that the students at Chicago would not look at Durham in general, or Duke in particular as, “in any way shape or form as intellectually engaging as their own community in Hyde Park is.” I’m so glad we got that straightened out.</p>

15

<p>I said any big public schools are bound to have a lot of parties</p>

<p>Please don’t get offended because I didn’t heap praise upon your alma mater.</p>

16

<p>The Top 20 Party Schools, According to the Princeton Review 2013</p>

<ol>
<li>West Virginia University, Morgantown</li>
<li>University of Iowa, Iowa City</li>
<li>Ohio University, Athens</li>
<li>University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign</li>
<li>University of Georgia, Athens</li>
<li>University of Florida, Gainesville</li>
<li>University of California-Santa Barbara</li>
<li>Florida State University, Tallahassee</li>
<li>Miami University of Ohio, Oxford</li>
<li>Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.</li>
<li>Penn State University, University Park, Pa.</li>
<li>DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind.</li>
<li>University of Wisconsin-Madison</li>
<li>University of Mississippi</li>
<li>University of Texas-Austin</li>
<li>University of Maryland, College Park</li>
<li>University of South Carolina, Columbia</li>
<li>James Madison University, Harrisonburg Va.</li>
<li>University of Maine, Orono</li>
<li>University of Tennessee, Knoxville</li>
</ol>

<p>[The</a> Top 20 Party Schools, According to the Princeton Review - BroBible.com](<a href=“http://www.brobible.com/college/article/top-20-party-schools-princeton-review]The”>http://www.brobible.com/college/article/top-20-party-schools-princeton-review)</p>

17

<p>*I said any big public schools are bound to have a lot of parties
*</p>

<p>Actually, any schools (public or private) that have big sports (Football or Basketball particularly), will likely have parties.</p>

18

<p>^That’s true, but the category you’ve defined encompasses, proportionally and in absolutes, far more public schools than private ones.</p>