<p>Didn’t say “pretend”. Being a pain is the self-righteous proclamation.</p>
<p>“You can hold a cup in your hand,” to me, implies pretending.</p>
<p>There is nothing self-righteous in telling people that you personally don’t drink alcohol.</p>
<p>If it is, then it is also self-righteous to say you do drink alcohol and to talk about drinking.</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s the case. I think neither is self-righteous. We all have a right to share what’s important to us, and we can all find people who want to receive and share with us. Those people are not going to be the people who require you to hold a cup in your hand and don’t want to hear about the “real you.”</p>
<p>^Dude, that was awesome. That was seriously inspiring. Thank you.</p>
<p>In every school there are always going to be people who party it doesn’t matter how prestigious or public the school is. If you avoid going to rages and clubs then you’ll have friends. People are not going to randomly dislike you because you don’t drink. People only dislike judgmental people. Spare people your opinion on their drinking until you become close with them but be sure to tell them beforehand that you do not drink. Peer pressure isn’t like how they say it is. Most people aren’t going to get in your face for drinking. If you go to a party then bring a water bottle or juice. Peer pressure in college is more subtle</p>
<p>I go to a top 20 party university where Michael Phelps got busted for smoking weed and I don’t drink or do drugs.</p>
<p>The biggest suggestion I have for you is to find a larger school. Smaller schools have fewer students and thus it’s more difficult to find students who gel with you. Larger schools, just by their very nature, have a much larger pool of people to choose from and you’re more likely to find others with either similar viewpoints or who are accepting of your desire to stay sober.</p>
<p>On top of that, don’t tell people you don’t drink and don’t get all judgmental on them! I’ve found that if I simply don’t say anything about not drinking, then things go a lot smoother than saying I don’t drink. A lot of people get offended if you say you don’t drink (which imo, is stupid, because I’m not judging them for drinking. I’m simply stating a fact.) If you go to a party and are offered alcohol, just say no thanks or grab a red solo cup and poor some juice in it and say you’re already good.</p>
<p>I would take AUgirl advice on going to larger student body population if you’re not drinking. Not to say all large schools doesn’t have a massive party/drinking scene but you’ll meet way more like-minded people in a larger community than in a close-knit one.</p>
<p>Thanks guys :-)</p>
<p>As a non-drinker in college it took me awhile to realize that when “everyone” was out at parties and drinking it was not actually everyone. If I walked down my dorm floor after “everyone” left for parties there actually were people left who didn’t were headed out to drink … and these folks were interested in a movie, playing cards, going to get dinner, going to a game, etc. You’ll be fine but don’t be afraid to take the intiative</p>
<p>I don’t drink or party, and my dorm last year was right next to a frat house (admittedly not a super active one in terms of parties). What me and a couple of my (also sober) suitemates did was go around the floor on weekend nights and see who was in. More often than not, one of the following applied to the people who were in: 1. They were studying (in which case we left them alone). 2. They were looking for something to do. 3. They were doing or planning on doing something, and were open to other people joining in. That’s how I made a lot of my friends around the floor.</p>
<p>Overall though, people don’t tend to care if you drink or not. Of course there’s bound to be some people who insist that you need to drink to have fun, but in my experience they’re by far the minority.</p>
<p>You can look for “dry” colleges. One that I know that has not-too wild parties with a fairly liberal and wholesome student body is St Olaf in Minnesota. With your stats, especially if you improve your SAT score, you’d get decent merit aid, too.
If you’re invited to a party, make sure to ask if non alcoholic beverages will be served. If not, take a cup that’s half full and whenever someone asks, say you’re finishing your cup. 
Make friends through study groups, sports, clubs, and activities.
Ask for what a school offers on a typical friday and saturday nights - then ask what activities are offered THAT weekend specifically.</p>
<p>Yeah you’ll be fine man. Trust me, college is truly different than high school. People are more mature and accepting of others. People won’t be judgmental and gossip. It’s a nice breath of fresh air for a change, I think you’ll like it.</p>
<p>The thing you have to remember is you seem pretty smart, and you are applying to good schools. Yeah there will be partying, but at schools like Cornell, the students there are going to be pretty focused on academics. You won’t be an outcast for not partying. You are there to get a degree, so you are doing yourself a favor with making sure you don’t mess up your future.</p>
<p>I respect people that are straight edge to be honest. The only drug I do is alcohol, and I am just a moderate drinker. I really like how it loosens me up and makes me more social so that’s why I do it. But I don’t ever want to become a heavy drinker because that **** isn’t good for you (obviously). </p>
<p>If you’re out at a social event and someone asks you why you’re not drinking, just straight up tell them “hey, it’s not my thing, I’ve seen it cause too many problems in my family, but it doesn’t bother me if you drink” and be cool about it, and I’m sure 99% of the people will probably think that’s respectable and won’t care at all. The 1% that does care, are losers who you don’t want to be friends with anyway. You will probably have a better future than them anyway. </p>
<p>In college, and really anywhere in life for that matter, you should just be friends with anyone that is nice to you. All this other stuff like whether they drink or not isn’t really important. Remember that, drinking alcohol does not make anyone cooler than you.</p>
<p>I think the only potential issues concern not you as an individual finding acceptance but rather whether you want to hang out with drinkers or with non-drinkers. Finding an friend group of non-drinkers can be hard, especially at small schools.
I go to a midsize school where I guess I could say I don’t drink. I think I’ve had a drink and a half at school over the space of 3 years. My closest friends indulge in alcohol and much, much more. I live on a floor where our motto references drinking and our walls are painted with murals of bottles. Our lounge is a bar. (I go to a very highly ranked “nerdy” school, so do check out the culture at your school and in your dorm closely. Top 10 may not mean a lot of non-drinkers.) If you don’t care whether your friends abstain or not, you’ll have a much larger group of people as potential friends. In that case, I feel like a small school could be fine. But, depending on how comfortable you feel around drinkers, you may want to target larger schools where there are more likely to be groups of non-drinkers.
Also, consider substance free dorms. I don’t know how common they are, but my friend lived in one at Princeton and it was exactly the environment she wanted.</p>