<p>Oh yeah…and party games like Balderdash are also a great way to have fun, sans alcohol</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I have 2 very close friends at Dartmouth, one drinks a lot and the other doesn’t drink more than a few when she does. Both are in the same frat (co-ed). From what they tell me there isn’t a whole lot to do though, so the frat houses tend to be a larger part of the culture than say, Columbia.</p>
<p>City campuses overall tend to have less intense drinking atmosphere, mostly because without a dominating force like frats the student bodies tend to be a lot more fragmented. That’s not to say there’s no drinking in city schools or vice versa, but something I’ve noticed from what friends tell me.</p>
<p>Thank you, 2-Iron and Katrot. 
Any other takes on the subject?</p>
<p>Twisted: I just reread your post and realized I misread it. 
sorry bout that! </p>
<p>Anyway, Twisted is correct. Small town college (or those out in the middle of nowhere) tend to have higher drinking rates because there isn’t as much to do on the weekends/at night as there is in large universities in/near larger cities.</p>
<p>My son described himself on the dorm application as rather conservative and a non-drinker, and low and behold, his room-mate is the same! They put the two non-drinkers together which I appreciate.<br>
Another of his friends at a diffferent school has many a tale of drunken students returning late at night, breaking things in the hallway, throwing up in the hallway, etc, so it is a valid question; for when the heavy duty drinkers come home to roost, everyone nearby feels the effect. If they didn’t drink so much in one sitting it wouldn’t be an issue.</p>
<p>Take a look at how alcohol in college is handled north of the border in Quebec, where the drinking age is 18:</p>
<p>[Drinking</a> outside the box](<a href=“http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/38/01/drinking/]Drinking”>http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/38/01/drinking/)</p>
<p>I’m going to second women’s colleges as places where there is a social life beyond alcohol. They certainly aren’t dry, but people definitely did other things.</p>
<p>I am currently a senior at Concordia College in MN (which someone posted as not being a drinking school) and there is a LOT of drinking, just goes to show you that schools can have reputations on both sides of the drinking issue.</p>
<p>i was worried about the same thing when i was applying to colleges. i thought everywhere would have an overwhelming drinking scene and it would be hard to meet the non drinkers. i would say try the honors college at state schools. that’s where i’m currently at (in a very big drinking school) and i have found so many cool people who don’t drink like me although there definitely are people who drink in my building too but they are easy to ignore. there are many things i do on weeknights and weekends. we tend to watch movies, play board games (as nerdy as it sounds they are so much fun!), play a pick up game of soccer, and just chill in our dorm rooms. there are definitely the nondrinkers here who lock themselves in their dorm rooms studying but i like that a lot of the others still want to have a good time and procrastinate from work as much as they can. it was so easy to meet nondrinkers i can’t describe it. i have never once been pressured to drink and have avoided parties for the most time (although going to one or two was my choice).</p>
<p>In all honesty go to a large state university, you are guaranteed to find non drinkers somewhere</p>
<p>Haha, you guys would definitely not like it in the UK.
Drinking age=18.
First week= Getting Smashed Every Day
Rest of the year= Getting Smashed 3 times a week minimum.
lol.</p>
<p>Whiskey in the jar, eh?</p>
<p>lol. I’ve heard about the drinking in GB. :)</p>
<p>I think the real question to ask is not how much of a drinking scene there is, but whether or not there’s pressure to participate in it. Like many have said, basically every school will have some people who party and some who don’t. What’s important is whether or not people will respect your decision not to partake in alcohol, or whether it will leave you a social pariah.</p>
<p>I don’t think that choosing not to drink will ruin your social life because there are people in every college who don’t who you could hang out with. But no doubt you will most likely be a minority as a non-drinker.</p>
<p>I’ve heard University of Alabama is pretty dry.</p>
<p>Drinking goes on on most college campuses, unless they are dry, that is a fact (and even there I kind of wonder about drinking, how much goes on ‘under the sheets’,though I assume kids who go to such schools are not into drinking or wouldn’t go there). With the 21 drinking age, in theory there shouldn’t be a lot, but of course there is, it is nearly impossible to stop.</p>
<p>From my own experiences many years ago, and talking to kids just out of school, it doesn’t sound all that much different. There are kids who party hard, who do drugs and alchohol frequently, get drunk a lot, and there are a lot of kids who occassionally drink and maybe get drunk, and kids who don’t drink. I was one of the kids who drank occassionally, maybe had some beer on the weekend, didn’t do drugs (I figured I was already wacked enough without them), and I wasn’t treated like a pariah, even when I went to frat parties (though I occassionally had problems there because I used to ref inter frat touch football games, but that is another story). Back then it was legal (drinking age went up to 19 when I was 19, 21 when I was already past that age), but from what I hear from kids today who have graduated, it hasn’t changed much one way or the other.</p>
<p>Some schools have more of a frat house dominated social life then others, which may lead to drinking being more important, but as far as kids go I never felt anyone was pressuring me to drink to excess, to do drugs, I had some friends who did some interesting stuff, but they had their thing, I had mine, and it was fine. About the only thing that didn’t go over well was those trying to preach to others, but other then that, there were plenty of people who didn’t drink much or at all, weren’t the partiers, and this was at NYU with all the temptations of the big evil city life or whatever.</p>
<p>As a parent, whose son in the not too distant future will be going away someplace, all I have done and can do is try and be reasonable with him, try to show him through example about consequences of doing things, about my own experiences, and to also not preach to him. My wife and I are not particularly drinkers, but we also have never made a big deal about it, alchohol isn’t taboo but we also have shown him healthy respect for it and have given him the kind of self confidence about issues that if he does drink, he knows we won’t judge him for it, but he also knows that doing anything like that for its own sake doesn’t always end up so good…</p>
<p>Hopefully children end up surrounding themselves with like minded people and have enough confidence and self respect to make decent choices (they won’t always). I don’t think you can protect your child from all of that, trying to find a school where drinking doesn’t go on in some form or the other among some people is not very practical IMO. Encourage your child to stay away from the frats and such, if that is a worry, talk to them about drinking and what it can do to grades, but keep in mind that if they decide they want to drink, they probably will make that decision themselves, rather then be ‘pressured into it’; peer pressure is immense, but frankly most kids who end up the party path choose to find it, decide to do it, they aren’t clubbed into it IME.</p>
<p>Quality of music is more important than the quality of alcohol. </p>
<p>The thing to remember is that for most people, alcohol is a catalyst, not the main event itself. For some people it is, but just ignore them. And some people already come with a catalyst, so they don’t need alcohol. =) </p>
<p>(btw, avoid frat parties, unless you hear about a really legendary one. underground apartment parties are the way to go.)</p>
<p>As with most things in college, it is difficult to generalize. Probably there are some who drink a lot and some who don’t even at so-called party schools.</p>
<p>A lot of the commuter schools tend not to be part of the drinking scene as well as some of the state schools here in cali. But there are definitely clubs and organizations that don’t drink which can benefit for those who don’t drink every weekend.</p>