<p>p’girl,
You’re right on the overweighting as IMO athletic life plays a larger role in collegiate life than you do. Even with that, however, athletics only counted for 21.7% of the total score while each of the nine other factors counted for 8.7% each. </p>
<p>But you’re wrong on the preoccupation with spectator sports. I also took in account the CP grades for Athletics which they gave based on:
students have school spirit
sports programs are respected
games are well-attended
intramurals are a prominent part of student life</p>
<p>If I went just on the spectator sport thing, then there is no way that Princeton and Dartmouth would get a B/B-. However, both received nice marks from CP for their Athletics and I rewarded them for that.</p>
<p>You clearly are underestimating the immense impact that big-time sports programs can have on a given campus. Football and basketball are larger than life many top schools, and the entire campus rallies behind the teams.</p>
<p>Choklit,
I think weather can have a significant effect on social life at a college as it affects both how and how much people interact. Warm weather provides many more opportunities for social activities from tossing a Frisbee in the College Quad to having lunch with your friends outside in the sunshine to creating a more relaxed environment via dressing comfortably in shorts and sandals.</p>
<p>Itry,
I can see you’re annoyed and I apologize for that. Let me be clear that this is not meant as some all-compassing, all-knowing “ranking.” Anyone knows that different folks will weight each of CP’s factors differently. You may hate Greek Life and love a campus with huge Diversity. Your friend may have had a bad experience with drugs and have much stronger views the Drug Scene variable and weight it much more. Etc, etc, etc. </p>
<p>If you want to be constructive, then suggest what is important to you and then do some investigating either by visiting some of these colleges personally or talking with folks who do or reading multiple other sources (like CP) who have done a lot of information gathering. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, it’s all meant to be fun and hopefully informative. I’m not trying to slight anyone, but I do think that there are differences in the various college social environments and this is one way to learn about that.</p>
<p>According to the Fiske guide, Brown and Vanderbilt had higher social life ratings than UCLA, USC, Harvard, and Princeton. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent for research where as you are sitting behind a computer and compiling other peoples data and making inaccurate rankings of schools. You are not even experiencing the social life of the other schools, so why even make a ranking?</p>
<p>I’d like to see data on how many students at each college marry each other. </p>
<p>Oh, as for weather, there’s another thread on days of sunshine per year at the top 50 unis. I don’t remember if that’s another hawkette list or not but I think it’s pretty useful, really. </p>
<p>I really don’t understand the antagonism on this thread. Hawkette made her own ranking, based on factors as she saw fit, and wanted to share. I see no problem with that.</p>
<p>Feel free to make your own ranking, taking out athletics or whatever and adding parties-per-square-inch or some other such measure if you wish.</p>
<p>“I really don’t understand the antagonism on this thread. Hawkette made her own ranking, based on factors as she saw fit, and wanted to share. I see no problem with that.”</p>
<p>All established posters on CC have reputations.</p>
<p>Then she should keep it to herself. She is “informing” people that schools like Columbia have a bad social life. The only time people should have a right to comment is for schools they attended or spent rigirous time researching.</p>
<p>She made a ranking, based on her own chosen factors, and posted it here for us all to see. No reason to be upset. Heck, if you don’t care for her ranking then why are you even bothering with this thread?</p>