<p>I don’t think anybody is denying that Dartmouth students and alums are very involved in social causes, but the issue for the OP is what is the percentage of students playing pong at Dartmouth? It has to be a lot higher than what it is at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, or Yale.</p>
<p>I attended Cornell. We drank a lot. But everytime I visited Dartmouth I was amazed at how much the kids drink there… and seemingly everything revolved around pong! If that’s your thing, it’s awesome. Otherwise the alternative activities may be not as good as at places like Brown, Cornell, or Columbia.</p>
<p>A good friend of mine from high school attended Dartmouth, and he was very happy to attend as he was a legacy and was able to fall in pretty well with the Christian group on campus. But I think his freshmen year was kind of hard for him because everybody in his suite was playing beer pong all the time. </p>
<p>I just think the OP, if he has an aversion to beer pong, may be prudent for ruling out Dartmouth. I don’t know. Maybe there are substance free dorms at Dartmouth. Or maybe he will quickly overcome this aversion and become the beer pong champion of whatever school he decides to attend. Life is an exercise is constrained optimization. </p>
<p>I also don’t want to sound like a Dartmouth hater either. I’ve been to two weddings of Dartmouth alums, and will be to two more over the next year. The school is great, and I have enjoyed many a ultimate tournament, hockey game, and hoking expedition in the Upper Valley.</p>
<p>In fact, Dartmouth and Cornell are my two favorite schools in the Ivy League. And I wish there was a school in the Northeast with top academics that contained Dartmouth’s sense of community with Cornell’s public-mission, egalitarian spirit. I was on another thread giving slipper a hard time, but it wasn’t over Dartmouth per se, it was about blindly jockeying any one of the top 10 to 15 non-HYPSM schools over another.</p>