<p>MagnoliaMom, no one said binge drinking was “primarily tied” to fraternity/sorority presence. Personally, I engaged in outrageous binge drinking in college, and there was absolutely no fraternity/sorority presence where I was. It would be ridiculous to suggest that all frat members were binge drinkers, or that non-frat members were not binge drinking.</p>
<p>On the other hand, anyone who thinks that fraternity/sorority presence is not a marker for a culture of excessive drinking is also fooling herself. It’s not the only marker, and its absence doesn’t provide assurance that a particular college doesn’t have a culture of excessive drinking. (See: Williams, which banished fraternities decades ago.) But it is rare (meaning, maybe nonexistent) to see a campus with strong fraternity presence but no widespread drinking culture. And there are good reasons for that: First, official pronouncements and pieties notwithstanding, most traditional fraternities (with the more or less willing participation of most traditional sororities) promote intoxication as the central feature of social life. Second, fraternities cost money, a strong fraternity system means a relatively affluent campus, and alcohol costs money, too. (And lots of alcohol costs lots of money.)</p>
<p>What you call “beloved elite Tier 1 schools” are also affluent, fraternities or not, and yes they have plenty of drinking and drug use. Still, there is a big difference between Harvard (urban, no fraternities) and Dartmouth (rural, fraternities) insofar as the centrality of intoxication is concerned.</p>
<p>People are constantly talking on these boards about the different cultures, vibes, student bodies, etc. at different schools, and we are supposed to believe that the drinking culture is the same at all of them?</p>
main reason I didn’t drink much in college, even though the drinking age was 18.</p>
<p>anyway - all good points above.
What can a parent do?<br>
Some colleges turn a “blind-eye” to underage drinking and some do not tolerate it.
Here is a contrast between two schools:
School A where one kid went - reputation as a “party” school - although there was a huge “non-party” contingent. The “rule” was no alchohol in the dorms if you are under 21. But… no one ever checked. If you were over 21 you could have alcohol but your 20 year old roommate could not. figure that one out. The only dorms that got checked were the wellness dorms and if you were caught you were moved to a regular dorm.</p>
<p>School B - Not much of a drinking school (according to my kid). No alcohol unless all suite-mates, apartment-mates are over 21. During the fire drills they have “health and welfare” inspections. All the dorms are suites or apartments. In the suites the college provides the micro-fridge and they must keep it in the common area. They also have a three strikes and your out policy. Out means out of any on-campus housing.</p>
<p>Some colleges also will call parents if a student (esp freshman) is caught with contraband.<br>
I have found (totally anecdotally) that over the past several years more colleges are moving toward a stricter alcohol policy at least in on campus housing.
Obviously, know your child and pay attention to their social life/grades etc.</p>
<p>– Rural, isolated campuses
– Residential campuses (most students live on campus)
– Relatively white, relatively affluent student body
– Most students full-time
– Strong fraternity/sorority presence</p>
<p>I’ll add three more:</p>
<p>– Not affiliated with a religion
– Coed
– Strong spectator sport scene</p>
<p>My niece is going to an all night contradance on Thanksgiving weekend. I’m invited, but haven’t decided if I’ll go.</p>
<p>JHS, you have your opinions and I have mine. My opinion is based on attending a campus with fraternity/sorority presence yet you state that there was “absolutely no fraternity/sorority presence” where you were. So you’re speculating on campuses that you haven’t attended, that’s your right, but call it what it is, your opinion.</p>
<p>JHS - Where is your foundation for the argument that binge drinking is worse at Middlebury vs Williams or even Ohio State? While I might agree that there is a party hard culture at Middlebury there is also a work your butt off mentality much the same as Williams or Amherst (small tony LACs - to use your words). Factually speaking, most of the statistics of college binge drinking is that the problem is very real, but perception is oft times worse than the reality (% of students who actually have destructive drinking patterns). </p>
<p>Personally, I’d be more concerned at schools where every night is a potential party night and there are plenty of schools like that. While I am sure serious punishments for being caught prove to be a slight deterrent for some students, I also think it is this mentality that is responsible for the rise in binge drinking and closeted drinking. I find it refreshing (and realistic) that Middlebury’s administration is doing an admiral job of trying to bring drinking in general into a general conversation about responsibility and accountability in an effort to curb destructive drinking and the use of hard liquor. All of this said, and I know it was merely an example, but I honestly don’t see how Middlebury’s drinking culture is worse than its peers, especially when you consider the work load at all of them. In the end, I definitely appreciate a more realistic approach to discussing how students choose to drink, vs not whether they do or not.</p>
<p>But all of this said, I don’t think police blotters are a good indication of party scene because a lot of schools have pseudo agreements with their local police and some local police love to bust the kids on campus. I’d read the school papers to learn about student issues on campus. Look at the school calendars to see what kind of programming is in place for students (as an alternative to a drinking culture) on the weekends. And yes, I’d pay attention to the published lists of party schools. But lest there be any doubt, if a kid wants to go to school to party - any school - he’ll find people to join him. But it is my opinion that at schools like Middlebury, you study your butt off the majority of the week and twice on Sundays, so if you’re partying all the time, you’re probably not going to be there for long.</p>
<p>Statements such as these, that have no factual basis and are rooted in speculation and innuendo, have little worth in an informed discussion of this topic.</p>
<p>A couple weeks ago, I talked to an old friend currently attending U Arizona. While there is almost always a party going on and most students like to drink, the school is just so big that there are people of every possible type on campus. I would guess that the same is true (maybe even more so) at almost any large university.</p>
<p>The OP asked two different questions: 1. How to determine if students are serious about academics and 2. How can you identify “party schools”. I stand by my answer to the first question about academics. If you want a student body which is focused on academics (principally), look for students who were focused on academics when they were in HS. As Modadunn points out, if the school is focused on academics, the students have to be or they are gone.</p>
<p>With respect to the second question, I don’t think that it is easy to identify “party schools” with any kind of a checklist, although if you combine JHS’s list with Cardinal Fang’s list I believe that you will find about half a dozen schools that meet those requirements. There are hundreds of schools which only meet some of those requirements and are not known as “party schools”. I don’t think “work hard/party hard” schools are “party schools”. The “party hard” part usually means a big party once in a while, but not several parties a week. It is not impossible to mix alcohol and academics, but that was not really the question that was asked.</p>
<p>According to DD and her friends Caltech followed by MIT seems like the most rigorous academically. But DD still finds time to have weekend formal dinners and party at MIT.</p>
<p>I disagree with JHS’s markers. First of all I think some form of party scene can be found just about anywhere. As far as those markers, I think most of the drinking (from what my kids tell me, both are in college), takes place at off-campus parties. In rural areas, there are few places to live off-campus, and most kids stay on-campus. In schools where there is nearby off-campus housing, there are usually lots of parties off-campus.</p>
<p>Most schools have strict rules about alcohol, although kids do seem to find ways to party. Off-campus, is much easier. Most frats are off campus, and do have parties so odds are there is drinking.</p>
<p>As far as white/affluent kids being heavier party-ers, I really don’t think so. Many of the more diverse, public colleges have huge party scenes as do the private, not-so-diverse colleges.</p>
<p>When we toured campuses I always asked the students what they did on the weekends, when does the weekend start, and are there many activities on-campus on a typical weekend. Students usually are pretty honest about these things.</p>
<p>Modadunn: I did not mean to imply that Williams has less of a drinking culture than Middlebury. Maybe so, maybe no, but for my purposes they are probably functionally identical. I did mean to speculate that perhaps Williams has less of a drinking culture than, say, Colby (to pick an example out of the air). I don’t know, but I would be surprised if there weren’t a least a little difference based on the types of kids who go to one or the other. </p>
<p>By the way, I thought the speech by Middlebury’s president was very good and very honest.</p>
<p>arcadia: You are right that I was speculating. But I feel pretty confident that at a place like Ohio State (and I was using Ohio State as “generic large public flagship with a big fraternity/sports culture, but not completely isolated”) there is a substantial population of non-drinkers alongside the substantial population of drinkers, so that the “average” drinking is less than at a top-tier affluent rural LAC. My speculation, though, was that if you took the same demographic slice at OSU and Middlebury/Williams, you might well have the same behaviors. What part of that sounds wrong to you? I wasn’t suggesting that form and location of a college don’t matter at all. I was suggesting that the fact that diverse College A has less overall drinking than nondiverse College B may not mean much to a kid who is part of the social group that would be drinking either place.</p>
<p>handemom: My markers ARE based on research, not speculation. Of course some form of party scene can be found just about anywhere, including places with none of my markers, but some places have more of it than others. Huge, more diverse public colleges have huge party scenes, but in part that’s because they have huge everything – their very visible huge party scenes may well mask equally huge non-party scenes.</p>
<p>In my community, at the high school level, the proposition that white/affluent kids are heavier partiers is so obviously true that it isn’t even a topic for discussion. What’s more, at the large, diverse public high school my kids attended, it was often assumed that they were heavy partiers because they were white, affluent, and lived in an affluent neighborhood.</p>
<p>Check out those Playboy and PR party school lists. I know that some doubt that these lists are valid…but where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire. One year. W&L came up high on the list…such small school! And yes, they are soaked with alcohol.
So are the big state Us like PSU and Ohio State. The cool thing is that these schools are so big that you WILL find non-partiers if you look, and it can be easier if you’re in a special honors program (although those kids party hardy too!).
I think it’s hard to find clear criteria. I know for examplet that Penn, GW and Boston College and big party scenes and they don’t match the criteria laid out by JHS.
I like the idea of checking the school newspaper. But be careful with the police blotters though. Some cops are just more strict and hand out lots of citations while others look the other way.</p>
<p>Does anyone have examples of schools that are not considered party schools? I’m actually serious… every school we’ve looked at seems like it has an active party scene!</p>
<p>Well, Penn, GWU, and Boston College are all pretty affluent, and Penn and GWU have fairly strong fraternity scenes (at least Penn does). Penn clearly has more of a party culture than peer colleges like Harvard, Brown, Columbia, or Chicago, but I think it gets a lot of its reputation based on comparison to them. (On one thread, recently, a student said, “Sure, Penn is the social Ivy, but that’s setting the bar very low. It’s like saying it’s the tallest midget.”) There are plenty of kids at Penn who have little or no participation in the party culture there.</p>
<p>Clearly there ARE differences between demographically similar institutions. There is plenty of drinking at Chicago, but compared to Duke?, no.</p>
<p>Anyway, I think the opposition between “serious academic” and “party” schools is a false one. Many “party” schools are also “serious academic” schools, and outside of Hollywood fantasies I don’t think there are any party schools where a serious student can’t find serious instruction. In fact, as far as I can tell, if you are really looking for a non-party atmosphere you may well have to compromise on academic quality.</p>
<p>JHS, I don’t know what community you live in, but I live in NYC. My son went to a large (about 3,000 students total), public, very diverse, highly regarded high school, my D went to a small private high school, no such assumptions were ever made in either case.</p>
<p>handemom, it says where I live right under my name.</p>
<p>Mainstream private high schools here have near-monolithic drinking cultures. Very few students do not participate. The large public academic magnet has every culture imaginable – drinking, straight-edge punk, highly religious (x 15 different religions), heroin, etc. But the general case there is that rich kids from the rich neighborhoods act like their private-school neighbors.</p>
<p>As for New York – excuse me, but isn’t the New York private school culture of excessive partying now the envy of every TV-watching teen in the world thanks to Gossip Girl? Of course I’m not suggesting that Gossip Girl is anything other than fantasy, but my understanding is that it has at least a passing connection with something real. I would be surprised if there wasn’t the same contrast between Stuyvesant and Dalton as I see here between the equivalent schools and their constituent communities.</p>
<p>Every school DOES have an active party scene. The only differences I’ve ever seen is in how overt the parties are and how much of a blind eye individual schools turn to it. For three years we lived near a college with a strict code of conduct - no smoking, no drinking, no dancing, no overnight visitors - yet virtually every weekend 2 blocks from campus there was a party. Unless they refilled the Budweiser cans with Pepsi and unless they were using some bizarrely scented incense, these students were clearly risking expulsion for the sake of having a “good time”. Was it the majority of the student body? No, but I don’t think it’s the majority of the student population at any school. Young people, many far from home, are going to push the boundaries and that includes parties.</p>
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<p>True. There seems to be this attitude here that these two communities are mutually exclusive. Why? In the real world people drink, some drink to excess on occasion yet are perfectly capable of being contributing members to society. Student populations aren’t uniform blobs. The idea that you can put together 1,000 to 40,000 18-22 year-olds and not have some of them doing something they’re not supposed to be doing is naive. Some percentage of that group are going to party hard. Another percentage will go to the parties and have a drink or two. Yet another percentage will never go to a party at all.</p>
<p>Frankly, college is about getting an education and not just in the classroom. These students are all going to have to face a society that has alcohol in it. The sooner they learn to handle that reality the better able they’ll be to handle it in “the real world”.</p>
<p>JHS, I guess the assumption that white/affluent kids is associated with hard-partying troubles me. I know many kids who fall into the white/affluent category, from both private and public schools, but I don’t see any more or less partying as compared to other populations of kids. It’s a mixed bag. </p>
<p>And, for the record, my daughter’s high school was nothing like Dalton, not even close, but my son’s was like Stuy, very much so. Both my kids attend public colleges outside NY.</p>