<p>My son is strongly considering Amherst, Dartmouth and Wesleyan. I have no firsthand knowledge of any of these schools. In reading the threads about the social life at Dartmouth, while the academics seem very good, descriptions of the social life scared me a bit. Social status seems to be conferred upon those in the right fraternities/sororities and playing varsity sports and what I take to be a relatively heavy emphasis on serious drinking. While kids definitely have relationships, there seems to be a lot of hookups after the serious drinking.</p>
<p>How would you characterize the social life at Amherst? Would you say it differs from Dartmouth (as described by students’ posts as above)? Do you have a satisfying social life at Amherst?</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, Amherst abolished fraternities in the 80’s. Is it clear how social status is defined at Amherst? </p>
<p>[I’ll post something similar on the Wesleyan site].</p>
<p>You might have seen this before, but if not… ;)</p>
<p>It’s from Dartmouth</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - Drinkin’ Time](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avYUL1A-WUM]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avYUL1A-WUM)</p>
<p>I hadn’t seen it but it is hilarious.</p>
<p>Wow, that was funny! I liked hearing the tour guide at the very end saying something to the effect that there is no more drinking than any other school, and then “any more questions about Greek life”, in a completely normal tone!!!</p>
<p>Shawbridge, hopefully one of the current students will respond to your post with real on-the-ground reporting. I can only speak more abstractly as a parent with a student there, and that’s not the same thing at all.</p>
<p>I think that it is really hard to generalize about Amherst’s social life in that way. This is a college campus, so of course there is going to be heavy drinking and drunk hookups. That by no means forms the basis of the social scene, though. Since so many people play sports, it keeps people from viewing athletes as separate from or better than the student body. Obviously people on teams together tend to become close to one another, but not to the exclusion of non-athletes. We have no official frats or sororities, so Greek life isn’t an issue. I’ve never visited Dartmouth and don’t know anyone there, but I can definitely say that students at Amherst don’t confer social status based on anything but personality. I don’t want to imply, however, that Amherst doesn’t have a fair amount of social stratification; there is definitely a variety of organically formed cliques. I have never heard anyone complain about the social structure here, although there may be some dissatisfied students. We hang out with the people we like and avoid those we don’t like, and it all works out pretty well in the end.</p>