"Much has been made of the academic life at these schools, but how do these schools compare outside of the classroom? I consider 14 criteria for evaluating a school’s social life:
*Welcoming nature and friendliness of the students
*Musical scene (both locally and for bands that come through)
*Athletic scene for entertainment purposes, ie, sports teams
*Greek life (good or bad)
*Minority Inclusiveness or general Student Inclusiveness
*Strength of party scene again Inclusiveness
*Size, diversity and cohesiveness of the student body and how this impacts social life
*Weather and its impact on social activities
*Proximity to urban life/arts
*Student activities including community service, club activities, intramural sports, etc.
*Alcohol and drug scene (Ur opinion)
Attractiveness of Girls (for Men) and Attractiveness of Guys (for the ladies of CC) ( Don’t be naive, and insult me. I know it matters to everyone. Just give your opinion)
Hookup Culture vs Religious Culture
^This is mostly based on Bias or your experiences if you have visited the colleges, so don’t come out and say “well social life depends on the person blah blah” I know it depends on the person, I am just asking your opinion based on my criteria, if you want you can add a criteria yourself.
Based on my own experience and what I have picked up over the years and here on CC, here is one person’s ranking of the quality of social life at the USNWR Top 20:
Vanderbilt
Stanford
U Penn
Northwestern
Dartmouth
Duke
Rice
Brown
Notre Dame
Princeton
Cornell
U Berkely
Wash U
Harvard
MIT
Columbia
Yale
U Chicago
Johns Hopkins
Caltech
Thank you for all the contributions coming, I will update the ranking every week based on new data from every CC replier.
I’m just providing based on people’s opinion of the Top 20 schools, while niche does over 200 colleges. Anyone can rank here, and I will do an average of all the replies.
@insanedreamer Based on the OPs criteria, it seems Vandy should be above Stanford (read: musical scene, proximity to urban life/arts, attractiveness, greek life)
Also, while I’ll admit I don’t know much about Rice, I definitely don’t think it should move up, I didn’t get much of a social vibe at all when I visited.
Perhaps I’m biased, but this list looks very reasonable to me.
@collegebobollege I haven’t been to Vandy, so you may be right, but just to argue the other side: music scene? only if you like country; urban life/arts - SanFran has plenty of that; attractiveness - the Vandy campus looks pretty, but Stanford is gorgeous too, plus its in Palo Alto, and Los Altos and Skyline are minutes away
@insanedreamer Not saying Stanford isn’t great, but you can’t beat the location of Vanderbilt - it’s right in the heart of a capitol city. And the music thing is a common misconception; only about a third of the music that comes through Nashville is country. As for attractiveness, I personally think the Vanderbilt campus is much more beautiful than the Stanford one, but I know that’s subjective and I was actually talking about the attractiveness of people as per the OPs list, which Vanderbilt is ranked very highly on (though again I know that’s somewhat subjective)
Any decent college will offer many, many different approaches to “social life,” and any list claiming to rank colleges by “social life” is broken by design.
@Slyther…I’m surprised Harvard is so low (Cambridge and Boston almost couldn’t have more things for college-aged students).
Also, surprised Northwestern is so high…Evanston seems to doing everything it can to turn into an upscale adult haven, as opposed to a great college town (where are the college bars for students to hang out in?). Student attendance at football and basketball games is pretty weak, Weather sucks, Different races seem to be barely aware of each other. Male students tend to be nerdy. Greek scene is good, but if you aren’t Greek…?