<p>thatgirl: the frat/sorority life at Cal is pretty huge. And the drinking culture just associated with that group is HUGE! I don’t know how you can be in the I-house these last 3 months and not see thousands of beer cups and falling down drunk students on home game weekends and all the frat invite nights. And I’m talking 10am drunks on game day and 2am drunks on invite night. It’s also pretty loud.</p>
<p>Not to mention pot, which is still rather widely used by Cal students.</p>
<p>That said, I do realize there are two alternate universes happening at once at Cal. 1) led by hung-over econ majors from frat houses (aka future investment bankers and real estate execs) and 2) non-greek science and technology majors studying Friday night.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon has plentiful parties every weekend, either in the frats or house parties. Don’t be fooled… the people may not be as attractive as is to be desired, but the opportunity is very much there to party (or stay in and play video games … anything goes)</p>
<p>It’s almost embarrassing how dead it is. My girlfriend goes there, and she’s been there for… what three months now? And still hasn’t tasted alcohol</p>
<p>Seconding GA Tech as a non-party school. Those guys have no time to go around partying if they want to graduate in four years. Unless they decide to jump onto the M-Train, that is.</p>
<p>Source: Anecdotes. I’ve got several friends who go there.</p>
<p>Cedarville - Ohio
Biola - Los Angeles
Union - Tennessee
Bryan - Tennessee
Southwest Baptist - Bolivar, MO
Cornerstone - Grand Rapids, MI
Grove City, PA
Olivet Nazarene, IL
BYU</p>
<p>At most of these schools, if you are found with alcohol you are suspended and then if found again, you are expelled.</p>
<p>These are not the only ones, but ones I know of off the top of my head. I know people who go or have gone to each of these schools (except BYU…but its reputation proceeds it).</p>
<p>If the criterion is “[hard to find] raucous alcohol-fueled behavior,” I would not agree that Georgia Tech should be added to the list. A fourth of the student body participates in Greek Life, and you can find parties everywhere in the Greek Sector on Friday nights.</p>
<p>During my freshman year, I went with some friends to find a party. We met a drunk guy who was lying down in the grass. He was conscious enough to both profanely yell at us and kindly direct us to AEPi.</p>
<p>Two months back, some of my roommate’s friends from Virginia Tech came by. On the way to Beta Theta Pi, I saw an obviously inebriated student standing atop a fire hydrant yelling at passersby. If the drunk guy in grass didn’t count, this guy’s behavior was definitely “raucous [and] alcohol-fueled” in my book.</p>
<p>Is Georgia Tech a party school? No. But, “raucous alcohol-fueled behavior” is easy to find.</p>
<p>This is really a ridiculous question. As Greybeard said “all schools are “non-party” schools for some of their students” and party schools for the rest of their students. </p>
<p>Realistically, the list of “non-party” schools would be those where alcohol and weed are totally banned from the entire campus and written into the school’s charter. Those schools ought to be easily identifiable by reviewing their policies. I know CC doesn’t want to deal with the competition but a good guide would be Princeton Review. Non-party schools include places like Brigham Young and Bob Jones University. Wheaton College (the one in Illinois), Oral Roberts U, places like that.</p>
<p>It’s laughable, a joke, that someone would think schools like a U of California campus or MIT are non-party schools just because a few nerds enroll. If that was the case then every Ivy League school and Top 20 LAC would have to be classified as “non-party.” Smart does not equate with non-party. Can you imagine Yale or Princeton or Swarthmore, schools that are harder to get into than Berkeley, as “non-party?” What a joke.</p>
<p>SUNY stony brook. All the frats are away from campus and most residents leave on the weekends, plus half of the students are commuters who don’t stick around on weekends.</p>
<p>Wow, must have changed a bit from when I was in college in the late 60s to early 70s. At that time, “chemistry” was both a major and a popular extra-curricular activity there.</p>
The lack of drinking at “religious” schools does NOT apply to Catholic colleges. Alcohol is an accepted, even encouraged part of Catholic life, and the Catholic colleges (Notre Dame, Villanova, etc) have robust party scenes. I grew up in that world, and my daughter is at a Jesuit college now, so I know those cultures.
This question really doesn’t apply to large universities, which are big enough to encompass every imaginable group, from partiers to devout abstainers. I went to USC in the peak of its lower-academic, party-hearty era (late '70s), and because I was a transfer student and not Greek, I was completely out of the drinking scene there, but I made friends anyway.
What would be most helpful would be pointers toward good small colleges where getting wasted doesn’t dominate the social scene, because unlike at big universities, where you can always find something else to do, at smaller schools it can be harder.</p>