<p>Alumother,
Here is how I introduced the topic originally:</p>
<p>"Much has been made of the academic life at these schools, but how do these schools compare outside of the classroom? I consider 10 criteria for evaluating a school's social life:
1) Welcoming nature and friendliness of the students
2) Musical scene (both locally and for bands that come through)
3) Athletic scene for entertainment purposes, ie, sports teams
4) Greek life (good or bad)
5) Strength of party scene
6) Size, diversity and cohesiveness of the student body and how this impacts social life
7) Weather and its impact on social activities
8) Proximity to urban life/arts
9) Student activities including community service, club activities, intramural sports, etc.
10) Alcohol and drug scene"</p>
<p>I then followed up later in the thread with my own perspectives and prefaced those with the following:</p>
<p>"I'm flattered that you think that there is some kind of method to the madness of my rankings above, but I must admit that this is pretty much a total guess. While I do have some feel for the social life of many of these schools, more than a few of my rankings reflect the opinions of others. Probably most important is that a good social life means different things to different people."</p>
<p>"If you are asking about my personal preferences, I listed in the OP the ten factors that I consider important.
(1) The students are the personality of a school and I think it is essential that students be in an environment with others that they respect, they can learn from, and that actually enjoy being with.
(2) I am a music fan and this is often of interest to students so I included that.
(3) On the issue of major sports programs, which you asked about, I think that these activities can have a very strong positive impact on a school environment and the overall student experience. If you have ever attended any of the following-PAC 10 football game at Stanford or Big 10 game at Northwestern, ACC basketball game at Duke, SEC baseball game at Vanderbilt or any game at Rice-then you understand how different that is from attending almost any Ivy League football or basketball game (U Penn basketball might be an exception but still nowhere near the level of intensity you'd find at Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Northwestern).
(4,5,10) The Greek life is bit more controversial as lots of folks love it and others loathe it. Same is somewhat true with the overall "party" scene, but generally I think that going to school in a universe of socially outgoing students is preferable. Having said that, I’m NOT a fan of huge alcohol abuse and the drug scene scares me.
(6) Size, diversity and cohesiveness are increasingly important in today's multicultural college environments and I think it is desirable that students should mix with other ethnic groups or students from backgrounds with which they are not familiar. And not only mix, but actually work with regularly and constructively.
(7) I'm a big fan of good weather and probably so are others and this does affect what types of social activities take place on a college campus (and when). Stanford's weather is truly magnificent while it's not too shabby either at Emory, Duke, Vanderbilt, or Rice.
(8) I also am a lover of the arts so I like being close to cities that have some cultural attractions, eg, symphony, art museum, visiting exhibitions or artists, etc.
(9) Finally, I think a school should have a ton of student activities that appeal to and involve a broad cross-section of students. There should be something for everyone so that students don't isolate themselves and spend all of their time in the library or in front of their computer. The best learning at college often comes outside of the classroom."</p>
<p>And FWIW, here is how I ranked the social life of the USNWR Top 20 schools:
1. Vanderbilt
2. Stanford
3. Duke
4. Northwestern
5. Rice
6. U Penn
7. Dartmouth
8. Brown
9. Notre Dame
10. Princeton
11. Cornell
12. MIT
13. Wash U
14. Harvard
15. Emory
16. Columbia
17. Yale
18. U Chicago
19. Johns Hopkins
20. Caltech</p>