<p>VERY Social schools
1. Dartmouth
2. Princeton
3. Stanford
4. U Penn
5. Vanderbilt
6. Northwestern
7. Notre Dame
8. Duke</p>
<p>SOCIAL but more cliquey and not everyone participates
9. Brown
10. Cornell
11. Wash U
12. Yale
13. MIT
14. Emory</p>
<p>Less SOCIAL, quieter, people are segmented according to extracurriculars. "Residential college" parties, but they seem a little more sterile and less student owned
15. Rice
16. Harvard</p>
<p>Few good bars and some frats, but cliquey and not that social
17. Columbia
18. Johns Hopkins</p>
<p>A couple frats, no bars, not social.<br>
19. U Chicago</p>
<p>I don't see how you can do a ranking like this. What someone considers a good social life (drinking and parties, for example) might be just what someone else thinks is a horrible social life. The chummy social life at Dartmouth might drive someone crazy if he prefers the "big city in your backyard" life at Columbia. This is truly a category where one size does not fit all and you can't really rank.</p>
<p>I agree, maybe Rice should be in the higher category. </p>
<p>Social in my opinion means that people know a lot of people, there are many widely publicized and attended events on campus, and the scene is inclusive (i.e. everyone is invited everywhere). Also, social means a significant percentage of the student body "goes out" on campus during the weekends. I think based on these metrics social life can be ranked.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt
Stanford
Northwestern
Dartmouth
U Penn
Notre Dame
Duke
Yale
Brown
Princeton
Cornell
Wash U
Emory
Rice
Harvard
Columbia
MIT
Johns Hopkins
U Chicago
Caltech</p>
<p>I agree with you Ricegal....personally, I need a city, and I am really not a big fan of fraternities at all. I don't care much for keggers. Arts and culture take precedence over presence of booze and sports for me. I think I would find a nonstop party school pretty unbearable. Social life is definitely very subjective.</p>
<p>How come everyone soley equates social life with sports?
of course, it's a lot of fun to watch sports and get hyped up, but access to big cities and a campus in a nice area is more important too right? i think social life is a conjunction of good sports and access to culture, which is usually found in big cities. in that sense i think this is the way the ranking for at least the top 10 should be:</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford: good sports and relatively close to SF</li>
<li>Duke: awesome b-ball, enough said. but i wish it were close to a city</li>
<li>Northwestern: half-an-hour from Chicago and big 10 sports</li>
<li>U Penn: IN phily</li>
<li>Rice: pretty good sports and layed back atmosphere</li>
<li>Notre Dame: fighting irish! but being in the boonies is a downside</li>
<li>Vanderbilt: sports and Nashville</li>
<li>Brown: close to Boston and NYC and not as cutthroat as the other ivies</li>
<li>Wash U: st. louis</li>
<li>Columbia: maybe not in school but you've got the big apple?</li>
</ol>
<p>Stanford's distance from SF is similar to Duke's distance from Raleigh/Chapel Hill - about 10 minutes in a car to get to where the sweet places are.</p>
<p>I think that theresaliu88 makes a good point about the availability of urban life and culture as these are things that I value as well. While many students could care less and may even revel in the fact that they are in a more remote location (Dartmouth, Cornell, Notre Dame), I thought more about how the other schools compared on the “culture” scale. So, considering the strength of the local MUSIC scene and already established bands coming through the areas of these college campuses, I’m suggesting the following grades (cities listed alphabetically under each grade):</p>
<p>Grade A
Boston-Harvard, MIT
Chicago-U Chicago, Northwestern
LA-Caltech
Nashville-Vanderbilt
New York-Columbia
Philadelphia-U Penn
SF Bay Area-Stanford </p>
<p>Grade B
Atlanta-Emory
Baltimore-Johns Hopkins
Houston-Rice
St. Louis-Wash U</p>
<p>Grade C
Durham-Duke
New Haven-Yale
Providence-Brown
Princeton-Princeton</p>
<p>Grade D
Hanover-Dartmouth
Ithaca-Cornell
South Bend-Notre Dame</p>
<p>If I were to do a separate grade for the availability of world class ART museums and the exhibitions that might come through, the list would probably change somewhat. Most of the A grade cities would remain, but while Nashville’s music scene is well known, it is definitely not in the same league with the others when it comes to art and museums. Also, some of the cities rated B for music could arguably move to an A grade-Atlanta (?), Houston, St. Louis-when you consider their art scene (although none of these are in the same class as NY, Chicago, LA, Boston). Furthermore, some of the C music cities have strong art populations and IMO deserve higher grades on the art/museum metric.</p>
<p>thethoughtprocess,
Unless you are referring to "sweet places" on the Peninsula, the trip from Stanford to the City is not that quick and I would say that Stanford is MUCH further from SF than Duke is from Chapel Hill. Without traffic, Palo Alto is at least a thrity minute drive and often much more. And while folks around Durham/CH complain about traffic, you ain't seen 101 or 280. But SF and the Bay Area has a LOT more to it than Durham, CH and Raleigh so IMO the extra time is worth it.</p>
<p>i agree with theresaliu88, being close to a big city is a huge pro for social life since you'll have access to a lot of cultural activities like awesome concerts, exhibitions, festivals and quality shopping/eating spots.</p>
<p>Just to mention a few, i'd say Stanford, Harvard, and Northwestern have the ideal location. While being close to the culturally rich cities like SF, Boston and Chicago respectively, they aren't located "in" the city which can be a disadvantage in terms of campus aesthetics/atmosphere and security.
i've been to UChicago and Columbia before, and it felt a little crammed in terms of the spacing of buildings and such, especially Columbia. And you could definitely tell that security was an issue as Columbia had walls built all around its campus. Same goes for Penn, JHU, and Caltech; security is an issue when being located in the heart of a city.</p>
<p>i don't know if you'd say Chapel Hill is a "city" in comparison to say New York, Chicago, and Boston, but Duke's location is at least better than ND and Cornell hands down but still not desirable for someone like myself who grew up in and enjoy the culture of the city.</p>
<p>I've gotten the sense that Rice has a more nerdy culture closer to the likes of MIT and CalTech and have gotten the impression that UChicago is even worse than JHU.</p>
<p>Rice's culture may be nerdy in its way, but the biggest event of the year is called "Beer Bike." I'm not sure that we can be compared to MIT or CalTech, because based on what I hear from people attending those schools Rice achieves a much better balance between quirkiness and a social scene.</p>
<p>It can be a little hard to rank the social life of 20 schools as few people have actually visited all 20. Nine posters submitted their “rankings” which is a bit small for this survey to have too much value. So, for those who have not yet posted a list and are willing to give it a try, post a ranking of the Top 5 or Top 10 among this elite group of colleges. </p>
<p>The tally so far for number of times in the Top 10 and number of times in the Top 5:</p>
<p>Vanderbilt (9/9 for the Top 10), (8/9 for the Top 5)
Stanford (9/9, 8/9)
U Penn (9/9, 7/9)
Duke (9/9, 5/9)
Notre Dame (9/9, 4/9)</p>
<p>Dartmouth (7/9, 5/9)
Northwestern (7/9, 4/9)
Brown (7/9, 0/9)</p>
<p>Princeton (5/9, 2/9)
Cornell (5/9, 0/9)</p>
<p>Rice (4/9, 2/9)</p>
<p>Wash U (3/9, 0/9)
Yale (3/9, 0/9)</p>
<p>Columbia (2/9. 0/9)</p>
<p>Emory (1/9. 0/9)
Johns Hopkins (1/9. 0/9)</p>
<p>MIT (0/9, 0/9)
Harvard (0/9, 0/9)
U Chicago (0/9, 0/9)
Caltech (0/9, 0/9)</p>