<p>Probably depends on the student is what I'm thinking, but just wanted to see what people thought. I'm going for a non-party, commuter school if possible, but that may just be me. </p>
<p>Mother of two college students here. To be perfectly honest, party or no party school, you can always find a party no matter where you go. My older son is at a university considered a non- party school but happened to live across the street from Frat row ladt year. There were parties going on every night. If you are not interested then do not attend. It is as simple as that. Younger son attends a university that has a party reputation from years past but he doesn’t attend any of the parties and is perfectly happy there. Unfortunately for many schools, it is hard to get rid of their party reputation no matter how hard they try.</p>
<p>It depends on the student. Regardless, there are always going to be parties at the “non-party schools,” and there will always be tons of people who aren’t partying at the “party schools.” </p>
<p>This whole idea is a bit misunderstood. There are certainly schools who have more of a reputation for either having or not having parties, but these are just generalizations. There’s no such thing as a “non-party school,” aside from perhaps smaller community colleges and schools that don’t have any kind of student resident population. </p>
<p>I’m currently attending a commuter school that has a small student residence population in nearby off-campus apartments. There are parties within the apartments but the school itself has no real night life. I prefer this personally because I don’t drink/smoke and I’m introverted, so parties don’t have a strong appeal to me. However, when I was applying to schools, my “#1” was a huge party school - but I was drawn to it for different reasons. </p>
<p>I’m a commuter student at a residential not-a-party-school, which is ideal for me. I don’t want anything to do with parties, but I don’t want to go to a school where everyone just goes to class and goes home (without joining student organizations or anything). </p>
<p>I know that being a party school doesn’t mean that all the students are party students and vise versa. </p>
<p>I personally prefer a school where students are social and are more than just books, but where there are avenues of exploration other than just parties. It’s just more appealing to me. Then again, if my top choice happened to be a “party school” other things aside, it would not put it out of the running. As it so happens, I found a school with a good balance and I am quite satisfied with it</p>
<p>I’ve focused my search on looking away from party schools. However, at all colleges the party/greek scene is only one facet of the entire vibe of the school. Tulane, despite having a reputation for being a party school in a party city, still has a pretty studious vibe. I ended up applying there.</p>
<p>It really depends on the student, as comfortablycurt mentioned… </p>
<p>For me, I avoided applying to schools that are labelled “party schools” because sometimes even normal day-to-day interactions annoy me. </p>
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<p>I don’t see how a school’s reputation for partying would be necessarily correlated with the general “friendliness” of the average student.</p>
<p>(I actually wasn’t talking about friendliness… but I do not relate with people who party)</p>
<p>You are doing disservice to yourself @quidditchcat. You can choose not to drink/party with those who do, but to say people who do annoy you with day to day interactions and you can’t relate, well that just shows a huge lack of tolerance. What will you do out in corporate America? People may not relate to a Quidditch cat person…but most people will tolerate that type rather than switch jobs to avoid day to day interaction with a nerd. Take a page from the book of diversity and acceptance. </p>
<p>Sorry if I sound very intolerant… It’s actually that I’m on the autism spectrum so sometimes I come off as a complete brat, especially if I’ve had a full day of classes already. </p>
<p>Sorry, okay.</p>
<p>I prefer a non-party school. Mine is a commuter school which is rapidly becoming a residential school. I’ll be on campus.</p>
<p>parttttyyyy school. there’s more to life than just studying and trying to be rich</p>
<p>When I was looking at colleges I didn’t want to go to a huge party school where almost all the students chose it because of the partying reputation, but I didn’t want to go somewhere socially dead either. I ended up choosing a rural LAC with quite a large drinking scene and then transferring (academic reasons) to a large residential state school with more overall parties but a lower percent of students who drink.</p>
<p>For reasons that had nothing to do with partying, I was determined to never commute from my parents’ house. </p>
<p>I’m going to base a big part of my decision on selectivity. I want to be surrounded by bright students. If that means I end up going to a “party school”, then cool. I’d rather have the option to party then not. </p>
<p>No way to generalize. Different people want different things. </p>
<p>And some non-partiers want party schools and vice versa. </p>
<p>I definitely wanted to go to a party school when I was a freshman in college, but I think “party school” means different things to different students. I didn’t necessarily want to go to fraternity parties every night and get blackout drunk and crawl back to my dorm room. I just wanted to go some place where partying on the weekends was normal and where students didn’t feel like they had to study all weekend in order to succeed. I think that’s probably along the lines of what most college students want.</p>