<p>I was kind of thinking that maybe I need to be looking at larger schools with special housing for quiet houses or substance free floors. </p>
<p>This week, I am looking at TAMU, Trinity, UT Austin, Southwestern, and then hopefully, OU on Friday. (I have already visited Rice, Austin College, and Baylor). That pretty much will cover this part of the country. I would like to know other colleges worth considering and looking at that are good schools, but where I won't be on the outside constantly, socially, because I chose to not drink or anything else like that. I can have fun! I just chose to not drink. (to be honest, my bio-side of the family has heavy alcoholism, so while I am not around it now, I do not want to get involved in it, at all).</p>
<p>Other schools on my list that I have not seen yet, and would love insight on, would include Harvey Mudd, Carnegie Mellon, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Carleton, Macalester, Grinnell, Swarthmore, Haverford, Rhodes, etc. Obviously, I am in the long list phase. I am trying to research these schools to figure out which ones will make my actual apply to lists. I know that many of the big universities will have things like wellness houses and substance free houses so I can find it there. But I would like to find smaller schools where I can fit in too.</p>
<p>Most of those smaller schools have sub free housing as well. And you will find SOME students at every school on your list who are non-drinkers. Both of my Ds are non-drinkers. One went to a LAC that does have a party scene, but was easily able to find friends that don’t drink. The other is headed to Harvey Mudd in the fall, so we will see when she gets there. Certainly there is drinking there, but she requested a quieter dorm on her housing form, so she is hoping it is minimal in her dorm.</p>
<p>Are you female? You might consider a women’s college like Mount Holyoke or Scripps. While there is partying there, it is somewhat tamer than at the mixed gender schools. If you really want no alcohol, there is always BYU. Schools with a smaller/non-existent Greek presence also have less (not none!) alcohol on campus. </p>
<p>Honestly… having been through the college search process a couple of times recently, you can’t find a truly dry campus. When talking with D1’s friends, I am sometimes surprised as stories of not just alcohol, but drug use as well on campuses that have a repuation as a bit less of a partying school than the rest.</p>
<p>Besides sub-free housing, you might also consider accepting any offers you get for honor housing or housing grouped by academic interest. My D1 did an option to house with people interested in her freshman seminar topic, and found that most of them were pretty serious students who limited their partying.</p>
<p>When you visit the campuses, be sure to pick up a student newspaper. Or read them online. You can learn a LOT about what is really going on through this route, including issues with alcohol and drugs on campus.</p>
<p>One more thing to add – this may be obvious, but don’t pick you schools just based on this. If you give some info on your stats, major, and finances, you might get some specific recommendations that will add to (or reduce) your current list.</p>
<p>I don’t need to limit it to dry campuses, just campuses where it would be acceptable to be a non-drinker and still fit in. I have known of a couple people to go to colleges who said if you do not drink there, you will sit alone on weekends and there is nothing else anyone does socially. But then, there are other schools where you can take it or leave it, and there is still stuff for everyone.</p>
<p>IMO schools that are located in cities have a greater diversity of things you can do that are non-drinking related. And I agree with the poster above, look for schools with wellness housing for freshman.</p>
<p>I’m a very moderate drinker who transferred to OU. If you don’t want to drink, that’s absolutely fine. In the month and a half I’ve been here, I’ve drank once, and still managed to find plenty to do on the weekends (and this is during summer when much of Norman, a true college town, is basically dead).</p>
<p>I don’t live in the dorms, but do know some non drinkers and very moderate ones who did and they didn’t have a problem. Most of these people weren’t in wellness or honors housing so I’d assume that even if you did live in a normal place you’d still find plenty of like minded peers.</p>
<p>Substance free halls can be good but read the fine print so your expectations meet reality. At D1’s school the substance free halls are not dry…just people who don’t put partying at top of to-do list so there is still some drinking. This probably varies from school to school.</p>
<p>I’ll agree that almost every college campus has some heavy drinkers and those that say they don’t probably have the problem moved off campus. And conversely, you will find like-minded non/light drinkers at every school.</p>
<p>Some of it depends on your hall and roommate, and how willing/able you are to make connections outside that group if you end up on a hall with a lot of partying. My D1 did have a roommate who was a heavy drinker freshman year. D1 moved at the semester break to a different room. Her whole hall wasn’t so into it, though (that academic grouping I mentioned before seemed to help).</p>
<p>My D also joined several activities on campus and met some like-minded friends through those groups. Swing dancing club sticks in my mind as a place where she made a lot of new friends that I know, and they are not big partiers. So some of it is making a plan on your own to seek out people in activities that aren’t focused on partying.</p>
<p>However… regarding living in “regular” dorms, you really are going to encounter some drinking there. My freshman year there was a boy who wanted to break the plexiglass window in a door outside my room with a football – he would rev up at about 2 am on Friday and Saturday nights, throwing that ball as hard as he could at the window. Drunk as a skunk… there was no stopping him. And people throw up in the bathrooms and halls sometimes, too. I think these things tend to be worst in freshman-only dorms, too.</p>
Just to be clear, there is PLENTY of drinking that happens in the honors dorms. Just because a student did well in high school doesn’t mean that he won’t binge drink in college.</p>