<p>I've heard plenty about Colgate's significant "party" environment. How prevalent are parties, drinking, and frat and sorority houses at Colgate? Colgate is a great school, but I don't want that kind of environment =X</p>
<p>If this is a concern for you I don’t think you’re going to fit in very well.</p>
<p>Same for me fungjj, I don’t want to attend a school that if I don’t drink, I won’t be a good fit.</p>
<p>Perhaps you guys should find a more religious school? For example, I don’t think you’d be out of place at Brigham Young. </p>
<p>Joking aside, you’re looking at a very rural school, there isn’t much else to do.</p>
<p>Or any other college! Even NYU.</p>
<p>Drinking and parties are part of college life anywhere, apart possibly for institutions with a religious mission. It’s up to you to decide how you spend your time and how much of a distraction you allow certain activities to become in your routine.</p>
<p>The colgate.edu website and the various surveys within college guides adequately portray campus life. There are plenty of clubs and organizations to join as well terrific opportunities for athletic pursuits. Of course you are there for the academics primarily and Colgate is rated as having one of the best college libraries, most accessible faculties and robust study group programs as well as having the most beautiful campus in the nation. It graduates, along with Notre Dame, the highest percentage of Division 1 varsity athletes as well. And yes, there is lots of beer.</p>
<p>About having “not much else to do”, I beg to differ. Colgate students are busy and engaged as they see fit. That’s life. When you look at the campus calendar and plethora of opportunities for students and engagement with faculty and administration, I would expect you would see that Colgate’s rural location does not deliver cultural or any other type of deprivation. In fact, in the eyes of the self-selected student body, it is a real strength. Plenty of outdoor activities and a vital relationship with the town of Hamilton. And no shopping malls!</p>
<p>Best of luck with your college search. By all means make the most of opportunities to visit various schools and make up your own mind.</p>
<p>Hm… how would Cornell and Brown be any different from Colgate when it comes to partying and drinking? They all have frat scenes. Cornell is also in “middle of nowhere”. You need stronger reasons than those to say that Colgate isn’t a good fit for you.</p>
<p>Markham is right. There is drinking at pretty much every college. I was always super busy and never bored, and there was never peer pressure to drink if one chose not to.</p>
<p>Parties, drinking, fraternities, and sororities are prevalent at Colgate. Some students even feel they are the dominant force on the campus social scene. As a result, Colgate is a party school but also has great academics. The strong party atmosphere was one of the major reasons I chose it over Cornell- a school with better academic rankings but students who were less socially inclined. If you would be unhappy in such an atmosphere, than I do not think you would be a fit for Colgate.</p>
<p>On paper you can make parallels between Colgate and Cornell/Brown because both have rural settings and the greek system. But if you were to visit all of these schools, it would be clear that Cornell and Brown kids, as a whole, have a stronger focus on studying and less of a focus on partying/drinking than Colgate students.</p>
<p>Markham mentioned going to the the Colgate admissions site in an attempt to gauge students life at Colgate While the site does give a good overview of the clubs, IM sports, etc. available to students, remember that the site is still a part of Colgate’s PR machine. Its not going to give you an (honest) answer to your questions about Colgate’s party atmosphere or the prevalence of drinking on campus.</p>
<p>If you are interested in digging a little deeper than what is on the Colgate site, or even in the Princeton Review, I suggest doing a google search for ‘college reviews’ and clicking through the links. </p>
<p>Best of luck, and I hope you love your four years at wherever you end up.</p>
<p>By all means visit college campuses and do lots of preparation beforehand so you can ask lots of questions about college life.</p>
<p>That said, I am not sure if I am happy and can agree with the remark that the colgate.edu site is anything other than a means for the Colgate community- students, alumni, parents and also applicants- to learn what the university’s constituents say about themselves. There are useful insights directly from students, faculty, alumni as well as administrators about about academic programs for students and alumni, student clubs, events for alumni, varsity and club sports, videos and blogs about projects and study groups, links to the campus and alumni newspapers, and what the new president has to say about Colgate and the challenges he and the Trustees look forward to addressing.</p>
<p>As an alumnus, I am very familiar with the site and what it aims to achieve. I think it offers great insight; in 5-6 years even the youngest applicant-viewer of the site will typically become an alumnus or alumna. The site will continue to serve your interests very well if you do matriculate.</p>
<p>Hold on…Brown is in a rural setting? Since when? Providence is a town which stands independent of Brown, with plenty to do outside the university gates. Comparing the settings of Brown and Colgate is beyond apples and oranges. Students are very different at both schools as well, take a look at the freshman profile stats.</p>
<p>As a student who is happy with how social the campus is and how balanced students’ lives are here but annoyed with the prevalence of greek life, binge drinking (not drinking in general but literally getting blackout), and cliquey-ness, I highly recommend you do not go to Colgate. It is for a very specific type of student and you guys do not sound like you would be happy here at all.</p>
<p>Cornell has Ithica which is a small city. Colgate has nothing. Long cold winters. Also, Cornell is larger, Given Colgate’s very small size and very rural location, there is less to do…</p>
<p>I hate to nit pick but Cornell is in Ithaca. And yes, it’s a fine school but has a far different appeal than does Colgate: largish university v. largish LAC.</p>
<p>About size and location, you have made some assertions. Now how about developing the context further?</p>
<p>Why not represent the numbers of events, programs, clubs, housing options, town amenities, and other draws for students, faculty, staff and alumni relative to the number of students at Colgate to get a better picture of what really happens on and off campus for students? Then there is the academic coursework, the Core and for most students the opportunity for a study group semester.</p>
<p>Next why not personalize your observations as to what you think is important to students and ask how you compare to others.</p>
<p>Then you can make whatever conclusions you like.</p>
<p>My personal take is that you might be happy at one or the other or both for different reasons. That’s why visits and overnights are useful.</p>
<p>By the way, I just read in the Dec., 2012 'Gateline that ED applications are up 16.5%. That’s impressive as a standalone but I would be interested in hearing how ED stats are changing at other top 20 LACs.</p>
<p>Further on the subject of campus life and the selections applicants make when choosing where they enroll, here is a new and interesting article:</p>
<p>[11</a>. Hamilton, NY - Morgan Brennan Closing Table - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mhj45mdme/11-hamilton-ny/]11”>http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mhj45mdme/11-hamilton-ny/)</p>
<p>You will see that Hamilton, NY, home to Colgate for almost 200 years, is 11th of 16 of America’s Friendliest towns. Hamilton is small and intimate. It has the venerable Colgate Inn, the largest independent bookstore in central NY (it’s operated by Colgate), 2 theaters, several restaurants, art galleries and various amenities. Indeed, Colgate and Hamilton benefit from a terrific town/gown relationship.</p>
<p>For more information, and until you may be able to visit to see for yourself, the colgate.edu website offers virtual tours of the campus and its facilities and the village of Hamilton which is a 5-10 minute walk from the center of Colgate’s academic life on the Hill.</p>
<p>Good luck with your college search!</p>
<p>I am currently a junior at Colgate, so I speak form experience. I too am not much of a partier. While drinking and partying are prevalent, they are also easy to avoid. Colgate has a large enough student body that you will most likely find like-minded peers.</p>
<p>Not sure that the party until you are sick school description is accurate! This was not true in the past, especially for pre-professional students and I hope that academically motivated students won’t be dissuaded from Colgate. In fact, it appears that the pre-med pathway is even stronger than when I applied in the '80s with early acceptance programs with several medical schools, obviating the need to stress over the MCAT.</p>