Princeton Review Rankings Related to Alcohol Consumption

Lots of Hard Liquor

  1. UDelaware
  2. Juniata
  3. Connecticut College
  4. UCSB
  5. Tulane
  6. Boston University
  7. Syracuse
  8. UMaine
  9. Colgate
  10. UIUC
  11. Wake Forest
  12. UGeorgia
  13. Bucknell
  14. Bentley
  15. St. Lawrence
  16. Ursinus
  17. Grinnell
  18. West Virginia
  19. UWisconsin--Madison 2O. Providence

Lots of Beer

  1. Lehigh
  2. UDayton
  3. UWisconsin--Madison
  4. West Virginia
  5. Union
  6. Syracuse
  7. Bucknell
  8. Tulane
  9. UDelaware
  10. Colgate
  11. UFlorida
  12. Providence
  13. URichmond
  14. Bowdoin
  15. UAlabama--Tuscaloosa
  16. Colby
  17. Eckerd
  18. Gettysburg
  19. Kenyon
  20. Wittenberg

Among Possible Questions

  1. Weak methodology appears to be the the largest concern. Nonetheless, do the included schools reveal anything regarding categories of schools? That is, are patterns related to aspects such as size, location, or academic reputation evident?

  2. Are included schools more likely to have been mischaracterized, or are schools that have not been included more likely to have been overlooked? Along these lines, it seems that PR selects a limited group of schools for its initial surveys.

  3. Do the rankings fall along a spectrum in which only minor differences exist, and therefore exaggerate possibly real, but small, differences beyond their significance?

  1. Women's, historically black, and mainly commuter schools seem to be absent or underrepresented, as expected from other research.
  2. Given Dartmouth's "wet" reputation, any explanation for its absence on these lists?

I think you are describing the problem with the academic rankings.

Maybe kids are just better at keeping their mouths shut at some schools than others…

Wow. A few names surprised me like Bowdoin & Colby. But Maine is cold and winters are long. Bentley, the future home of many top CPA’s for hard liquor?

UDel, Tulane, UW/Madison, Syracuse, Bucknell, Colgate, Providence College, West Virginia on both lists.

One can see that there are very few conclusions that one can draw about alcohol consumption and any particular trait — e.g., the size of the school, big university v. liberal arts, or quality of academics, to name a few. You have the whole range right on these lists! And of course, it goes without saying that, while there is probably some justification for the conclusion of these (many very fine) schools on this list, if they had a 21-40 list does anyone think that it would be a noticeable difference. As another poster has pointed out, this silly ranking has all the flaws of the other rankings that people unfortunately over rely on.

What would you like to deduce? Everything is there to confirm or deny all preconceived notions. Want to bash Greek schools? How about football or rural or private or flagships? Rorschach city college click bait kardashian trump xxx hot amish women etc

Do the rankings rely entirely on campus safety reports? If so, then schools where all of the party life is off campus will appear misleadingly clean and sober; while schools where everything happens within the school’s jurisdiction will rank a lot higher.

The lists are based on student surveys, including of students of legal age. Campus safety reports are not a factor.

Objection…hearsay!!!

Hot Amish women?

Though surveys of this type lack rigor, I wouldn’t regard them as hearsay in that they ask about one’s personal behavior rather than about the behavior of others.

I used to do network support at a Catholic grade school and I needed a test search that was slightly risky but not too horrible if things weren’t tight. I honestly don’t know if there are bad sites out there that return from that search, but I’m at work now and not going to try to find out.

Don’t want to get into a debate on this topic as it’s really not worth it, but according to the Princeton Review’s methodology page, these two particular lists are assembled based on student answers to two individual questions that are not really asking about personal behavior:

“How widely is beer used at your school?” and “how widely is hard liquor used at your school?”

They use a 5 point Likert scale (we are not privy to the five ranges/spreads used for these questions) and then assign a normalized score regarding consensus of opinion on that topic. Perhaps most importantly, we are never provided the scores themselves, only the numerical ranking, so again we have no idea of the magnitude of differences between scores, outliers, etc. They hide all of the truly useful numbers and just count 1, 2, 3, 4…

While admittedly not entirely hearsay (that was a tongue-in-cheek response…ironically I was somewhat under the influence…don’t drink and post, kids!) it’s really not self-reporting either. If they asked about personal alcohol use in a quantitative way and then aggregated the responses it would be a much more accurate and useful. As it stands, not so much. But as with most surveys of this type, accuracy and validity are not as important to the surveyor as views and publicity.

I agree that these schools are so varied. I will also say that a ranking based on student boasting can be deceptive. Students want to be a top party school in many cases - it’s a bragging right. However, note that a usual suspect on this list, PSU, is missing. I’m sure students there are less willing to brag after tragedy and being placed under a national microscope.

I will say that we did a tour of Lehigh and it had a major party feel - stacks of pizza boxes and beer cans over flowing trash cans, frat boys running around yelling - it wasn’t a great look.

Re #13, as you stated, though not necessarily hearsay in that direct observation would be involved, I was mistaken in my comment in reply #11.

Reefer Madness

  1. University of Vermont
  2. Bard
  3. Pitzer
  4. Wesleyan
  5. Reed
  6. Colorado College
  7. Marlboro
  8. University of Rhode Island
  9. Warren Wilson
  10. Bennington
  11. Sarah Lawrence
  12. University of Wisconsin--Madison
  13. Skidmore
  14. Ithaca
  15. Champlain
  16. University of Colorado--Boulder
  17. UC--Santa Cruz
  18. Emerson
  19. Eckerd
  20. SUNY--Purchase

Comment

With two exceptions, these schools do not overlap with those in the alcohol categories. This might indicate a degree of validity with respect to the surveys, in that the results seem connected to the characteristics of the colleges themselves, rather than the psychological characteristics of the respondents (i.e., respondents inclined to reply in the affirmative to survey questions of this type irrespective of actual atmospheres do not appear to be concentrated at a limited group of schools).

Which two schools overlap ?

University of Wisconsin-Madison clearly does overlap. Eckerd seems to be the other.

I honestly did not know the UW Madison had such an alcohol and drug culture. No judgement. Just surprised.

Nobody ever called UW the place where fun goes to die. :)>-