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I would side with JHS on this, but generalizations are just not too accurate in this area. For what it’s worth, I have seen few truly low-income or immigrant students who have a cavalier enough attitude about money to spend their time partying when the family is paying tuition.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, it’s not an assumption. It’s a fact that on average, schools that are richer and whiter have more binge drinking. Binge drinking is a huge concern and the subject of much research in the social sciences. All colleges have drinkers, but some colleges have a larger proportion of students that binge drink. Those colleges are the rural, non-religious colleges with affluent, white students, fraternities and a spectator sports culture. (Kenyon? Middlebury? Amherst? Put down that beer, I’m talking to you.)</p>
<p>Could someone link me to these well known facts about the non-religious, white guy being a bigger partier? I get there might be less to do on rural campuses, so drinking might be the weekend sport for some. But I would never consider Kenyon, Amherst or Middlebury Party Schools. In fact, do any of these schools even have frats? </p>
<p>What I find so completely laughable is how there seems to be some kind of Lake Wobegone mentality on CC - But not only are the kids well above average it’s “my kid is a 4.0 overachiever who has made friends with only academic all stars similar to him.her and has no interest in any kind of party culture.” Seriously? Please crawl out from under your rock and come into the light of day. “Party Schools” are typically defined as schools where spending half the week going to class (or not) with a hangover still leaves you able to pass the class. I highly doubt that this would ever be possible at MIT (who is known for very big steam blowing). University of Wisconsin? They have people falling into the lake nearly every year and the Halloween party is attending by thousands of students around the country every year. Do you really think the same level of partying goes on with those headed up to Middlebury this weekend for the Quidditch World Cup? I’ve spent some time at Ohio State… HUGE MASSIVE parties that rival the entire attendance of some of those smaller LAC’s. </p>
<p>Lets just say that if my intention was to party in college, I’d pick a school known for a helluva lot easier academics than the Amherst Williams Middlebury small LAC. These are not “party schools.” Even Colgate, who has a repuation in the general NE of loving to party plus it does have fraternities I would not consider a “party school.”</p>
<p>While it is an assumption, I do fear the the correlation between white and affluent populations and drinking does exist. The parents often have active social lives leaving their home empty and the kids party. Even if you have one that doesn’t drink, the minute the garage door opens after dinner out or something the kids are squirting out every door of the house. The kids (at least in our area) are often at parties (with parents) and have very easy access to the alcohol which is unmonitored. Although in my “group” we generally hire someone to “watch” the coolers and alcohol to keep the kids out of it if it’s a large party. Parents often also drink and have alcohol in the homes, boats, RVs whatever which can very easily be pilfered. If you are white, affluent and live in a rural area there are a million places the kids can go where they would not be found or seen. Of course this carries over to college. I think there is a huge, huge difference between drinking in college and “binge drinking” however. There is also a huge difference between kids that drink socially and those that drink to get drunk. And there are kids that just don’t drink. I have one of each - one that drinks and drank before 21 and one that doesn’t and probably won’t. But this is true of all “adults” that there is a whole spectrum.</p>
<p>mini has provided links many times, maybe even in this thread.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, while there are definitely pockets of drinking kids in our (large urbanish) high school there appears to be much more drinking at the whiter richer high schools in the surrounding towns. I have yet to hear any tales of our kids getting into trouble at Homecoming or Prom, while other communities make the papers regularly. (We get into the paper for other problems though!)</p>
<p>JHS:
momofthreeboys
DD have attended private school through out with a private HS at ~$34000 a year. So you can imagine the student body of the school. You will be surprised to know that the school has no tolerance policy on drinking.
We have not come across any white student at her school that have been found indulging in any such activities.
The only exception might be that the white student population of the school is around 55%. But which is true for most of the schools in this area anyway.</p>
<p>Schools can be both academically intense and filled with drinkers–Dartmouth is a prime example of a “work hard”, “party hard” school. Duke is another</p>
<p>hohum
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<p>Do visit MIT and you will be able to make out why it is not considered a party school.
Though kids do have fun and parties there too.</p>
<p>Examples of schools that aren’t party schools: Chicago, CalTech, MIT, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Brigham Young, St. Olaf, CUNY, Kalamazoo, Spelman, UC-Irvine</p>
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<li><p>Every school has a no-tolerance policy on drinking . . . at school. That’s not where the drinking happens (most of the time).</p></li>
<li><p>MIT may not be a party school, but if I recall correctly it had a freshman die of alcohol poisoning a few years ago, and he didn’t fall into a vat of lab supplies. This is not to slam MIT at all. I am certain that students at MIT, on average, spend meaningfully less time drunk than students most other places. But it (and Chicago, etc. – I have personal knowledge on that one) are different in degree more than in kind.</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t think the issue is so much that affluent kids have negligent parents with full liquor cabinets – you are deluding yourself if you think that’s what the problem amounts to. My kids drank, and we handled the liquor cabinet problem by simply “forgetting” to buy any liquor while they were still living at home. Affluent kids have money to buy stuff, including stuff they shouldn’t have. Maybe they get it from an allowance; in my kids’ case (and other kids’ cases, too) they got it from jobs they held, but we didn’t make them account for what they earned, or give it to us to help with the rent and food. With money, and with older kids (older siblings of friends, co-workers), they have access to anything they want.</p></li>
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<p>As far as I can tell, they drink because (a) it’s fun, and (b) it doesn’t have any negative consequences. (Grounding isn’t a negative consequence.) Lives don’t get ruined, no one flunks out of school, they are pretty careful not to drink and drive. They may do a few things they regret, but in a fun sort of way that doesn’t stop them from seeing if they can do that some more. The less affluent kids – the ones still in school and going to college – see the detritus of drugs and alcohol all around them, and they often assimilate the notion that losers drink and do drugs. They don’t want to be losers, and they don’t want to go to jail if they are caught, which is perfectly likely to happen to them. Not so much to their wealthier counterparts. The rich kids have no sense that to drink and do drugs makes you a loser, since they are drinking and doing drugs with the kids from Yale.</p>
<p>Parental attitudes do enter into it, of course. I will admit that I didn’t care to fight a never-ending battle to keep my kids from drinking. I didn’t think anything terrible was likely to happen to them as long as they behaved responsibly, and I thought it was easier to get them to behave responsibly if they could acknowledge what they were doing rather than hiding it from me. Maybe I was right, or maybe it was just dumb luck, but I pretty much got what I wanted.</p>
<p>Of course every school is a party school to some degree. You put a bunch of people just emerging from adolescence to adulthood in a situation where they have more freedom than they’ve ever had before, and less responsibility than they’ll ever have again, and they are going to party. It has been ever thus, and thus it will ever be.</p>
<p>But I will say that of the schools we’ve visited, Clark and Brandeis both had the feel of places where a really heavy drinking scene would be a bit out of character. (I know that’s totally subjective and has a high likelihood of being utter BS, but that’s how it seemed.)</p>
<p>JHS:
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<p>The no-tolerance policy is not related to drinking on campus but extends to all off campus parties including other schools parties. There are documented cases of students getting kicked off indulging in drinking at nearby public HS parties.</p>
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A person can induldge in drinking at home too so individual cases are not the criteria for a party or non party school.
First you need to define a criteria before branding any school as party or non party schools.</p>
<p>For analysis purpose following might distinguish a party and non party schools
Party School: Every day is friday and party till you passout either on your bed or some where else
Non Party School: Every weekday till Thursday is academic and Friday, Saturday are party day and you can party till you passout either on your bed or some where else.</p>
<p>Now add schools to one or the other. Kids need time out and if they party Friday/Saturday at any school then that school is not a party school.</p>
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How would you “add schools to one or the other”? Are you seriously insinuating that the entire student body (often in the tens of thousands) at any university will be partying at a given time?</p>
<p>To party on the weekends does not a party school make. </p>
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<p>Is this a serious question? Please. At least use common sense. However, when talking about 40K students, I would bet that you could find people partying at all hours of the day and night, every day of the year - including finals. No question about it.</p>
<p>And just to throw this out there… Some schools may not have a very big party reputation, but it could be that no one sticks around over the weekends. And if everyone leaves on the weekends, it may not be any kind of party school, but it won’t be much fun if the campus basically shuts down.</p>
<p>noimagination:
The notion is not applicable to all students in any way ever. When we talk about anything in number than it is the average number.
if you randomly pick 10 students on campus on a Tuesday night, How many of them going to party that night or not decide if the school is a party school or not?</p>
<p>The quesiton is not valid if asked on a Friday or Saturday as most students on those two day on any college campus will be partying.</p>
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<p>Sorry but I disagree. Drinking is not limited to white, affluent kids at college. Here’s my personal observation:</p>
<p>We own a lake house in a rural, lower socio-economic part of town. Not only do very few go to college, but many of them never finish HS. There is as much, if not more, partying going on in this ‘not affluent’ population than any college-prep school in town. This is also true for the more ‘middle-class’ HSs in our area. </p>
<p>I think people are kidding themselves if they think this is more prevalent among affluent students. Unfortunately, this occurs at ALL socio-economic levels whether kids go to college or not, whether they have money or not. In fact, it’s pretty prevalent in most high schools and even into young adulthood. We have young professional adults in their mid-twenties working at my company that regularly report they spent their weekends ‘bar-hopping’ and partying to all hours of the morning. </p>
<p>As for the white-affluent issue. My son attends the most ‘affluent’ private school in town. People who do not have kids here like to make statements about how much our students party, etc. When my son was in middle school the local sheriff was invited to speak to a group of parents at our school. I asked him, point-blank, if our school has more drinking and drugs than the public high schools. After he stopped laughing, he said, unequivocally, no. He said it’s a problem at every school, in every demographic co-hort you can imagine. Not every student is going to choose to drink but it’s still an huge problem at HS and colleges. </p>
<p>Watching this issue up close and personal for nearly 12 years at my son’s school - there are kids who are big drinkers and those who are not. Those who are not are in the clear majority. Those who are big drinkers aren’t the most affluent in the school - but they almost always have parents who look the other way, shrug and say ‘kids will be kids and as long as they’re not driving, I don’t care’, the ones with absentee parents, and the ones who think it’s perfectly acceptable to send their 16-17 years old kids to the beach for a week of partying, etc.</p>
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Why do we care what the majority do? Even if only 1 of the 10 don’t drink, that would indicate 1000+ nondrinkers on a campus of 10000+. Surely that’s enough people for almost anyone to find a social niche.
Exactly. By that logic, there is no point whatsoever in classifying “party schools”, since it will vary too much within each individual university.</p>
<p>noimagination:
That is very true but think it from this point, not all 1000+ non drinkers are going to stay together. If 9 out 10 are partying then it will be really difficult to find a place to be able to study for that 1 out 10 student unless that student become a loner.
Also there are peer pressure if all your friends are going to party tonight, it might be difficult for 7 out each 10 of that 1000+ to not go.
Go to a party school like of UC SB or UC SC, it is difficult to study if the dorm have so loud music with alcohol easily available.</p>
<p>^ People tend to make friends with others like themselves.</p>
<p>ParentOfIvyHope – I pretty much agree with you, although I think you have to make allowance for the occasional Thursday night, too. But what you describe would fully qualify for the binge drinking statistics (“partying” until you come close to passing out a couple nights a week), and not so many parents here would admit that that was OK with them. I think it’s realistic for a first-semester freshman. I would hope that the drinking would diminish over time.</p>
<p>The Yale of my youth met your Party School definition many, many times over. We had a standing Tuesday Night Party in my college, starting around 11:00 pm. We had Master’s Teas on Wednesday afternoons with punchbowls of whiskey sours. There were always parties on Thursdays, and large, official, sanctioned parties on Friday and Saturday. The senior societies met (to drink, largely) on Sunday and Wednesday nights. Monday was pretty clear, though, at least of public drinking opportunities. </p>
<p>What happened was you learned to say “no, thanks”. And you made sure you got your work done first. Some people didn’t, and they had problems, but it wasn’t so many people. And some people just opted out of that aspect of the college.</p>
<p>MomLive: I was comparing private school college-bound kids to public school college-bound kids, not private school kids to public school dropouts, and not private school kids to public school kids in the same community with the same demographics (except to say that I didn’t see much difference there). I should have made clear that I don’t claim there is a difference between private schools and public schools in the affluent suburbs.</p>