It’s that time of year when college football season is less than a month away, the NFL pre-season is beginning, and we’re all sweating our asses off in the dog days of Summer waiting for football to really begin.
One distraction I look forward to every year around this time is the Princeton Review‘s list of the top party schools in America.
I’m an FSU grad and enjoy seeing my alma mater on the list every year because if we’re being honest, we all know that FSU won’t ever crack the top 15 when it comes to overall academics. That’s just not in the cards for Florida State. But we can still compete when it comes to binge drinking (and other things). I’m not pleased to see that our arch-rival Florida Gators outrank us on the list but we’ve got a full season to rectify that.
The Princeton Review‘s list of the Top Party Schools is ranked based on these 5 factors:
1. Beer consumption
2. Liquor consumption
3. Drug consumption
4. Hours student spent outside of the classroom daily
5. The popularity of the fraternity and sorority scene on campus
Based on that criteria, here are the Top 20 Party Schools in America for 2018 (according to the Princeton Review):
1. Univ. of Delaware Newark DE
2. West Virginia Univ. Morgantown WV
3. Tulane Univ. New Orleans LA
4. Syracuse Univ. Syracuse NY
5. Bucknell Univ. Lewisburg PA
6. Lehigh Univ. Bethlehem, PA
7. Univ. of Cal-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara CA
8. Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Madison WI
9. Colgate Univ. Hamilton NY
10. Univ. of Rhode Island Kingston RI
11. Univ. of Alabama-Tuscaloosa Tuscaloosa AL
12. Univ. of Vermont Burlington VT
13. Providence College Providence RI
14. Wake Forest Univ. Winston-Salem NC
15. Union College (NY) Schenectady NY
16. Univ. of Maine Orono ME
17. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana IL
18. Univ. of Florida Gainesville FL
19. Florida State Univ. Tallahassee FL
20. Sonoma State Univ. Rohnert Park CA
There aren’t too many straight-up basketball schools on there, and that’s somewhat surprising.
You’ve got Syracuse but they try just as hard in Football as they in NCAA Basketball. Bucknell/Lehigh can sneak into the tournament. But for the most part, this is a list of random schools who love to get hammered and some football schools.
It’s also interesting that one of the criteria for ‘top party schools’ was drug use and there’s only 2 out of 20 on that list that is in a state with legalized marijuana (both California schools).